88 Miles Per Hour
by Perfect Lionheart
Summary: Xander dressed as Doc Brown out of Back To The Future and invented a time machine. PTB got tired of him going back to wear costume after costume and kicked him out, beginning a Slider adventure. First stop? Halloween in a canon Buffy-verse.
1. Chapter 1

Eighty Eight Miles Per Hour  
Chapter One

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Lionheart  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

The question was, what if Xander had dressed as a certain time-traveling mad scientist?

OoOoO

Prologue:

"Young Man!"

Xander looked up from the wig he'd just bought to see some old guy approaching him. The teen barely had time to register the old gentleman had a stand-up shock of white hair an awful lot like the wig in his hands before his attention got drawn to the older gentleman's eyepatch and slightly crazy smile. But he didn't get time to say anything before the older guy was already upon him.

"Say, that's a nice wig you've got there." The old guy gave a slightly demented smile that was somehow meant, and yet failed utterly, to be reassuring. "With a wig like that and a lab coat, easily obtained from any high school chemistry class, you could dress yourself rather effectively as a famous character from a popular series of films. Doctor Emmett Brown from Back to the Future, wasn't it? But it looks like your costume is incomplete. Fortunately, it just so happens that I have with me the requisite accessories."

The guy spoke faster than ordinary people, almost Willow-babble fast, although he was perfectly understandable, and gave the sense he spoke that quickly all of the time. Before Xander knew what was going on the older guy had already exploded into motion, reaching into a carrying pack and removing a plastic hoverboard prop, looking just like it did in the movies, and the strange silvery glasses and cowboy gear worn by the actor in the later two films, piling them all in the stunned teen's arms, who was too shocked to resist the presents.

"There you go, young man," he said, again too quickly, proving that he probably did say things that rapidly all of the time. "I was going to wear it myself, but I couldn't bear there to be two of us. Now, you must excuse me, as I have another costume to buy. Oh, and don't forget this!" With another one of those smiles that more or less completely failed to be reassuring, the old man carefully placed a set of old style keys in the young boy's hands, before twirling and striding away, with an absent, "Enjoy your party!" tossed over his shoulder as a passing remark as he disappeared back in the costume store.

Somewhat dazed by the encounter with the intense oddball of a man, the teen headed home in a haze. On arriving, he was able to sort through the gifts. It was, Xander reflected in a somewhat stunned way, along with the white haired wig he'd just bought from that new costume shop and the lab coat he'd borrowed from the chem lab, exactly what he needed to play the mad genius as he was at the trilogy's end. There was even a book on sports statistics to stick in one of the lab coat pockets!

Grinning over his prizes, the young man rejoicing in his good fortune proclaimed, "Heh, am I the two-dollar costume king or what?"

OoOoO

"Is the costume I ordered in stock?"

Ethan glanced up from completing the purchase of his latest customer and saw a taller older man staring at him with a somewhat demented smile, made even creepier by an eyepatch.

Ethan liked him at once.

The Brit asked politely, "What name was it reserved under?"

Again that smile hinting the man behind it was somewhat unhinged. "Dr. Emmett Brown."

Nodding, the chaos mage excused himself and shortly came out of the back with a plastic wrapped bundle of clothes and a list. Presenting them, and ringing up the price, Ethan casually asked, "So, what are you dressing as?"

Dr. Brown just gave him that demented grin. "Oh, just a mad scientist."

After he was gone, Ethan whistled behind his cash register. "Don't need a costume for that."

Half an hour later, an eighty year old man, stooped over and almost bald, came in and purchased a Wolverine costume he'd had on reserve. After that, Ethan closed up the shop.

It was showtime.

OoOoO

Chapter One:

"Young Man!"

Xander looked up and saw a musclebound adult with close-cropped hair bearing down on him, giving the teen an immediate and intense look over the plastic gun in his hands before staring at him with a disapproving frown. "Where is the wig you were going to buy? Nevermind that now, I have an alternative costume choice I was going to offer." Snatching the plastic gun out of the stunned teen's hands and breaking it under his foot in one smooth motion, the guy pressed a large box into the young man's unresisting arms.

"There you go. I was going to wear it myself, but see that you could use it more. I hope you don't mind, I took the liberty of opening it and removing one piece, but no one but yourself should ever notice. Have fun now!"

Xander stared at the back of the man who disappeared off into the costume store. Carefully setting down the box, he opened it to find a complete costume inside, and quickly sped off home with a nerdy gleam of comic book delight in his eyes.

The only thing missing was the chest piece that would indicate the prosthetic heart under the armor, and the guy was right. No one but Xander would know it wasn't there.

The teen began to dress as Iron Man in elated, comic book geek, bliss.

OoOoO

"Are you the proprietor of this establishment?"

Ethan looked up from checking out his latest customer to see who was talking. Immediately upon seeing the gentleman's demented and not-quite-sane grin, the chaos mage not only dismissed his faint fear of a cop, but immediately felt himself put at ease.

Anyone that crazy had to be a kindred spirit at heart.

"Yes. What can I do for you?"

If possible, the customer's grin got even wider. Placing a color drawing and small plastic model on the checkout counter, he stated, "I lost a bet, and now have to dress as this character. I was wondering if there was anything you could do?"

Ethan looked from the very female figure of both the photo and the model up to the very masculine man standing before him. The way the girl character dressed, there was no hiding that she was every inch purely female. Classically attired, and yet daring too. There was no human way of fitting the male bodybuilder standing in front of him into any costume that could pass itself off as the girl portrayed in the flat glossy and plastic statue.

Oh, yes. A kindred spirit indeed.

Ethan picked up the little, plastic statue. "Yes, I think I can do something. I'll just borrow this as collateral against the loan of the costume pieces, if you don't mind?"

The crazy man gave him a very reassuring series of nods, and Ethan went to the back of his shop, where he used magic to transform the plastic model into the required costume. It would fit even over a bodybuilder of that size, yet it had enough magic it would also shrink him down proportionately to make for a very convincing double of the female character.

In short order, Ethan was back out front ringing up the sale.

OoOoO

"Wow! Hello, Mrs Robinson!"

Joyce Summers giggled, but any further conversation was interrupted by her eldest daughter coming downstairs to demand of her guest, "Where's Willow?"

Xander frowned, even though no one could see it under his Iron Man mask. "I thought she was with you."

Before either teen could misinterpret, Joyce provided, "Willow's father called and explained they would be having a family outing, and she won't be able to make it. So, you two are to go out on your own this evening."

Xander blushed, thoughts of it being just the two of them, even if only on the walk to and from school, drawing this close to date-like territory to his mind and driving out any fear over the missing Willow.

Buffy grimaced, having followed exactly the same train of thought, and not having any of the same enthusiasm for it, her heart belonging instead to a corpse older than the country she was born in. "C'mon, Iron Man, let's get this over with," she groused, already unhappy with the evening.

After they'd split up to get their kids, Xander never felt the tranq dart that hit him in the neck.

OoOoO

Chaos magic swept the town, and in a small basement lab a rather fashionably dressed young woman woke up, already seated at an old-style computer system, whereupon the monitor sprang to life and a man's image began speaking. "Good evening, Madam. Or, I should say, Doctor Stingray. My name is Doctor Emmett Brown, and this is an alternate universe to your own where the current year is 1997. I initiated this contact because I believe we each hold the answers to each other's problems. Your world languishes under the heels of a tyrant you cannot possibly destroy, and this world is about to be merged into a nearby dimension that can only be described as Hell. Demons out of Earth's myths, including vampires and less savory creatures, already stalk this town, and you are currently sitting not far from a dimensional weak point that is going to be key in that collapse."

Dr. Sylia Stingray blinked as several pieces of monitoring equipment flashed. And, though the energy readings and underlying theory were unfamiliar, the projection graph results were indeed dire. The picture recordings of stalking demons were not comforting either, and the strange, non-human DNA strings flashed alongside each image provided evidence this probably wasn't a hoax.

It would just be too costly and complicated to fake, all for uncertain results. Con artists would usually try to craft the most credible tale possible, not tell some outrageous story that most would probably not believe even if it was true.

And the implications of that were somewhat frightening to the young mechanical genius.

After giving her only a second to assimilate the data, the man's image spoke on, "The way I am using to contact you is flawed, so my presentation must of necessity be brief. We are only able to make contact due to a unique occurrence that I only knew of by living through, and was able to travel back in time to take advantage of again. You're currently possessing my body, in point of fact."

Startled, Sylia glanced to where a mirror had just then become illuminated, and saw that while the resemblance was close, this wasn't her own form. Part of her immediately began to suspect the worst, that her mind was now inhabiting a replacement body built by Genom and that this was all set up for her to be a form of psychological torture, but the man's voice hadn't finished speaking. "As evidence that our worlds are not the same, I have provided recordings. In this world the events of your own are a rather popular, but short-lived cartoon series. You will find those recorded on the machine you are sitting at. If, as I think, you are a cyborg, you can download those for full review later. Otherwise, I beg you to watch them, but be brief, for our connection is not going to last much longer than two hours, and we have much to do."

The man's face leaned closer to the camera he'd been using to record this proposal. "The way I believe we can help each other is simple - a trade of technologies. I have mastered Time Travel, which you could use to go back to prevent your father's murder, and stop his discoveries from ever falling into the hands of those who'd murdered him to gain economic control of your world. But, unfortunately my discovery does nothing to help my case, as I've learned through multiple attempts that what I need is some method of fighting the forces of Hell to save my world. To do that, we have to be able to face off against thousands of superhuman monstrosities, and this world doesn't have anywhere near that capability. What I need, in short, is technology not unlike your combat hardsuits and robot designs."

With the daintily manicured fingers of one hand, Sylia took up a pen, and wrote on a handy piece of paper. "Nice offer, but I don't give those secrets to just anyone. If you could take advantage of this 'unique occurrence' to contact me once, you can do it again if you have the technology you say you do. In fact, next time you contact me, leave the time machine where I can test it."

Then the young mecha genius and hardsuit designer sat back in the comfy chair and began to watch the lives of herself and her close friends, as reduced to an anime show.

OoOoO

Sylia blinked, expecting to be back in her lab underneath the lingerie store where she kept her secret workrooms, only instead to find herself back in an unfamiliar basement, a different room than the last time but the same ancient computing equipment around her. Just as she came to that awareness, a monitor sprang to life with the same man's face on it. "Greetings Madam, or should I say Doctor Stingray? If you have seen this recording before, please switch to the second program." A button flashed on the keyboard. "Otherwise, allow me to introduce myself, for I am Doctor Emmett Brown..."

Dr Stingray switched to the second recording after it became evident the first was just a simple replay of the original proposal she'd seen.

The second tape was a very short one. It only showed the same man standing next to an ancient automobile, nervously rubbing his fingers through his tall hair. "Well, Madam, this is the time machine. You'll find it parked out front, already charged. The keys are in the drawer of the desk before you. To use it, simply set this control panel, and accelerate the vehicle to eighty eight miles per hour. I only ask that you make a short trip, as I haven't got very much fuel for the nuclear reaction to generate the one point twenty one gigawatts of electricity I need, and that you don't travel more than an hour to the future - for only twenty years into the future of *this* world, the planet is entirely overrun with superhuman monsters. Without your hardsuit, I fear you'd not survive, and that *is* my body you are wearing. To say nothing of the possibilities of what could happen to me if you jump outside of the two hour window that generates the contact between us. Oh, and I forgot to mention, thanks to a previous experiment I have practical anti-gravity among the technologies I have to offer you in exchange for yours. Well, I do hope this convinces you."

The recorded man's image reached toward the camera and the image faded.

Taking the key out of the top desk drawer, and rooting around the rest of the makeshift portable lab he'd installed down here, recognizing most of the equipment from the first time he'd called her, the young lady walked outside to find the car exactly where he had left it. The control panel was laughably simple, already set to what would be one hour into the future if what he'd said about today's date had been right.

Nice, but that wasn't the experiment she wanted to run.

Sylia Stingray reprogrammed the device to take her back instead of forward, engaged the engine, and pulled away from the curb.

Thirty years seemed a nice, round number.

OoOoO

Earlier that Evening:

Ethan Rayne looked up from his sales counter to see an elegant older lady of about fifty come inside his store. She asked for costumes she'd pre-ordered, and made her purchase.

He thought nothing of it.

OoOoO

The man currently calling himself Doctor Emmett Brown came awake with a groan, looked down at his withered hands, and wondered aloud, "How did I become fifty again?"

Looking down at the desk he'd been sprawled out on, he saw it was a completely utilitarian office filled with highly advanced computers completely unlike the small setup he'd built out of available computer parts he'd scrounged to carry in his trunk as he made his trips through time, and not a window to be found to let him to get his bearings. He couldn't even tell if it was day or night outside. Checking out the sleek desk again, he saw it covered with data disks and unfamiliar machines, but atop it all was a stack of handwritten documents. The first was a note, to him, presumably from the lady he'd just dressed as last night.

It read: "Doctor Brown, next time *always* store more fuel in the time machine, if you please. I went on a trip, and found out only after arrival that not only did your technology work exactly as advertised, I didn't have the means to get back to when I started. Since I aimed back in time thirty years to escape any pre-planned deception on your part, as an hour forward would be too easy to fake, I now know more about the world you are in than I care to. And yes, I confirmed that the demon menace was very real. Sorry about the old wounds. Not only did I confirm the demons, but, as you say, your people are completely without useful methods to fight them. The one organization that even claims to try sends only one girl, who at best can make one city slightly safer, when your entire world teems with demonic threats. So, yes. I agree. You need my help. Don't bother calling me up again, as I've already had thirty years to study your notes and reconstruct your technology, including not only the time travel machine, which you should have built into a truck or a bus for extra carrying capacity by the way, but also antigravity, and the dimension sliding device you built after dressing as the scientist Quinn Mallory. So I consider myself well paid."

He flipped the page over as he'd finished the first side.

"During those thirty years I used your cash reserves to start a small company, computer peripherals for the most part. I kept the public front limited to ordinary things that would be available to a society of this tech level anyway, or a few months ahead in some cases when I needed to capture market share. But I used the proceeds to buy the parts I needed to reconstruct machinery of a tech level I am more familiar with, and secretly built a mainframe and an autofactory to produce boomers - the robot combat devices on my world that you'd asked for, and hardsuits much like my team uses. I suggest you use only those boomer types that are able to disguise themselves as human, if you wage your war clandestinely. If not, I'd certainly understand, but once this technology gets exposed, I expect you'd have every government on your planet fighting you trying to get control over it. Still, that is your choice, as it is your fight, not mine. So I have kept my end of our bargain. You have my technology, and I have yours. And you were right, we both needed what the other had to offer. I leave you the company I set up for you as a bonus. After all this time the only thing I am after is a return to my own world, to set it right and see my friends again."

Finished with both sides of the first, the very ancient man flipped over to where Sylia's note continued on the second page.

"One of the prime technologies you wanted from me was one created by my father for recording purely mental data onto computer storage devices so that information can be copied and transferred from brain to brain. Now you not only have my notes the theory, I have built a couple of those devices for you. You are seated at one now. My knowledge of science and technology I have recorded for you on a data unit like my father left me, that will flash-program you with everything you need to know once you touch the red button before you. You should already be wearing the headset, unless the girl I dressed as overcame the anesthetic I took and left our shared secret headquarters."

Coming to that part of the note, the fifty year old man touched his forehead, and was indeed reassured to be wearing a metallic headpiece of presumably advanced construction.

Before activating the now flashing red button, however, he read, and the note continued, "As I stated, I have had more time than I liked to read over your notes and journals. So, I know about your past, and about the enchanted costumes you used both to contact me and acquire extra knowledge and powers for yourself. Armed with that knowledge, I took the chance that a second costume would do the same for me, hopefully providing me with extra memories and abilities for me to take home. I hope you do not mind. I know I took a risk, as you left no indication you knew what happened when one person wore two costumes - and yet between the one that made you me, and the one I put on myself, that is what we were doing. But I had to have those abilities, if possible. You possess my regrets if anything went wrong."

The old man sighed, as checking downward confirmed his guess that Sylia Stingray had dressed as a sorceress. Lina Inverse, if he didn't miss his guess.

He'd tried that himself a few times. But so far without the results he'd wanted. A quick self-grope revealed that he was still male, however. That confirmed past experiences. So, shedding the costume and running a relieved hand through his long white hair again, the fifty year old man flipped over the second page and continued reading.

"As recompense for the risk I put your body through, I used the same technology I have for recording purely mental data onto a computer format to render a copy of this sorceress for you while she was presumably asleep. And I also know from your notes that you'd hoped to do the same to the younger version of you native to this universe, in an attempt to learn the technology behind the real version of the costume you gave him. So I went ahead and recorded Tony Stark's memories for you while he was asleep. I hope that leaves us even.

"Respectfully yours,  
Sylia Stingray

"P.S. I saw the Back to the Future trilogy as it came out, by the way, and rather liked it. It certainly gave me ideas on how to use the technology your devices taught me. "

Doctor Brown sighed and smiled and touched the red button on her machine.

OoOoO

Xander Harris groaned as he woke up, only to discover he was securely strapped down to some kind of medical table. "Oh, great. I can only hope this is some kind of kinky foreplay in a fantasy I am dreaming."

"No. I am afraid that would be too close to masturbation. Besides, you do not represent an example of my preferred sexual tastes."

Startled by this almost too-quick response, Xander turned his head quickly to find the source of the voice, and found an old man with a tall shock of white hair looking like he licked electric plugs as a passtime standing in the door with a mug of hot cocoa in one hand.

"Allow me to introduce myself," the old man gave a half-bow. "I am currently going by Dr. Emmett Brown, but you and I both know that can't possibly be my real name, because that is a movie character who doesn't exist in the real universe. Instead, let me tell you the truth, I only dressed as Doctor Brown out of the Back to the Future trilogy. For me, that was somewhat around sixty years ago, or ninety I suppose, now. For you, however, that was last night. And that is only significant because last night a chaos mage cast a spell turning everyone into their Halloween costumes."

The man gave a smile that was more than somewhat mad.

"Aaaannnd, why did you cast that?" the young teen ventured, fearing the guy was nuts.

The old guy gave a disturbingly birdlike cock of his head. "Oh. I am afraid you are laboring under a misconception. I am not, nor have I ever been, a chaos mage. Indeed, most every style of magic I've tried hasn't worked. No, young man. Sixty, or rather ninety, years ago I dressed as a mad scientist who knew how to travel through time. But even knowing how, it took me thirty years to assemble a working device and get the needed fuel. The reason this is important to you is, I was born Alexander LaVelle Harris."

Xander was now officially freaking out as the old guy gave him a creepy, unhinged smile.

The mad scientist took a seat. "Now, be assured, I am not you. No, I suppose I have to take this explanation in order. First, I would like to say that the experience did not do a great deal to change me. I found math slightly easier, but that was all. So I stayed devoted to demon hunting. Considering that my future, I gave school little effort and less thought, did not go to college, and became a carpenter. I told my friends carpentry was 'saving the world one stake at a time'."

Again with the creepy grin. What freaked out the younger copy of Xander even more was, he could see himself quipping out a line exactly like that one.

The smile fell off the older man's face. "Then everything went to Hell, literally I assure you. The world got dragged down a pit because we'd missed one little apocalypse out of I can't even tell you how many. Giles, Buffy, Willow... they all died, or worse, became demons themselves. It was as horrific a failure as anything you could imagine, plus fifty percent. And what is worst of all, I can tell you our group was more than partly responsible for it."

Now the young Xander really began creeping out, but he could tell the old guy believed it.

The older Xander rubbed under one eye. "I'd become crippled along the way, lost one eye and parts of both legs, the eye to an evil preacher not too many years from now, and both legs got bitten halfway off to a swamp monster not too long after I completed a term in Africa. As a result, I was off the active duty list, so was not involved in the catastrophe, only in the aftermath. Somewhat obsessive about my friends, I had ways to keep tabs on them, so was able to get warning and flee before the real destruction hit our base. Too crippled to fight and too loyal not to, I persevered. Saving our friends was all I could think of. At last my desperation awoke the lingering memories of our possession by Doctor Brown, and his time machine."

Again with that creepy smile, and yet the young Xander could see *exactly* how he could come to think such a smile was reassuring, having gone around the bend watching everything he'd ever loved disappear, vanishing into the worst of all possible futures.

The doctor went on, "And that, my friend, is the real start of our story. Twenty years from now, our world will be dragged down into Hell. It took me ten years of scrounging amidst the ruins of an Earth ruled by demons to find all the parts I needed. In a strange twist of fate, I even got the plutonium I needed from a group of Libyans who wanted me to build them a bomb. Naturally, I felt time travel a more rewarding purpose for it."

"So you went back?" The younger Xander asked.

"I went back," the mad doctor agreed. "By my first costume transmutation, I only gained the skills and knowledge of Doctor Brown from the very early parts of the first movie. Our only aim in dressing as him was that he was a famous character in a movie that we liked, and we could get the wig cheaply. But since our own future produced only Hell, damnation for our world, and suffering for our friends, when we finally produced a functional time machine and went back to our youth, I gave my younger self the accessories he needed to become the Doctor Brown from the very latest parts of the movie trilogy, after he'd learned about the secrets of antigravity and fusion out of a movie future than was so much more pleasant than our real one. But it didn't help, not even that I left a genuine guide of sports statistics we could use to generate money to create our inventions faster. That money all went to Buffy. At one point she had to buy a second house just to have a place to keep all of her shoes."

The young Xander snorted. He could see that. "Why not just pick a better costume?"

"Believe me, I tried that too." The older one cupped his cocoa in wrinkled hands. "I've been Superman, The Terminator, wizards, super soldiers, mutants, space marines and dozens of others. But our problem is, after the spell is over nothing ever stays but the knowledge you've gained, and even then the only person I know who remembered anything was us. Me that is, and now you. We dressed others in every costume you could think of, but only I could recall anything from when I'd been costumed."

"So, super-soldiers..." the younger man tempted.

"You're not listening." The older scientist Xander reproved. "I told you, nothing stays but a few memories. Beam weapons and armor out of science fiction all revert back to plastic the moment the spell is over. Super powers go away. Magic learned out of being Sorcerer Supreme turns out to be useless, as laws of magic seem to be different with every world having their own - much like a local language having different words and rules of grammar. I am expert in half a dozen magical styles, and cannot even float a pencil in our own world. Likewise, fighting styles taught to warriors who rely even partially on magic or super science are completely useless without those advantages. I only messed myself up by becoming half a dozen mystic warriors, desperately searching for one whose abilities would still work after the spell was over. And most superheroes are all but worthless without their powers."

"Batman?" the young man prodded.

The older Xander didn't even blink. "I don't believe you have any concept of how reliant he is on the vast infrastructure his wealth provides. Think about it for a moment. Without his costume, specialty devices, secret headquarters loaded with tools and supplies, allies, vast contact list and infrastructure supporting him, what is he? A gymnast with a keen mind. His power, in this sense, is his vast wealth - wealth that our Halloween experience does not provide. Even his business skills demand you start out wealthy. Yes, he trains rigorously. However, in the absence of his unique tool set he becomes somewhat less impressive. Also, his aversion to killing can be a real hindrance in a kill-or-be-killed environment." Again the Doctor gave that mad grin. "Besides, I still haven't overcome the desire to reach for a Bat-Something-Or-Other whenever I am faced with a crisis."

The younger Xander nodded in sympathy. "Yeah. That could be a pain."

The older Xander put his cup down. "All of these experiments I had to perform on myself, of course. The younger version of me still had to dress as Doctor Brown, or else I would endanger the future with the result that the me who was helping him would not exist, and he would then follow blindly our original path into the future, without my ability to go back in time to fix it. You've watched the movie. You know how easy it would be to wipe myself out of existence entirely. I knew our course, and without time travel we had no hope."

"Sooo, you are here again, why? Not messing with the younger version is a rule, right?" The younger Xander stretched as well as he could tied on a bed with restraints.

The mad scientist snorted. "I am here because you are not the younger version of me, but an analog. Attempts to alter my own past failed. Paradox prevented any alteration in our own past extreme enough to matter, which meant I could not only not change myself in any meaningful way, but because of my obsession with being involved, I could not change the group, either. And it was their fault our world essentially died. So, unable to save my own friends, I decided I could at least preserve a version of them, and dressed as the scientist Quinn Mallory from the show Sliders."

Realization began to dawn on the younger Xander.

The older version put aside his now-empty cup of hot chocolate. "It took me another thirty years to understand and reconstruct the science I remembered from him. By that time I was old, and nearly out of plutonium, and the world had gone to hell again - this time as I was carefully watching every step along the way. Still, I made one more trip into the past to put on a Wolverine costume, knowing that even during the short time I was him the regeneration he is known for would reverse my old age, and correct all of my accumulated injuries. After so many years of practice, I was pretty spry on my prosthetic legs, and had gotten used to having only one eye, but that doesn't hold a candle to having the real body parts back. As an extra bonus, being that character even gave me his impressive build!"

"So, shouldn't you be younger?" the young one asked. After all, Wolverine had never looked this old.

The older version of Xander gave a slightly cracked smile. "I was, up until last night. I was making a deal with another scientist, one who had ability to help me. But she wanted to know the time machine wasn't a hoax, and accidentally kidnapped my body for another thirty years doing so. Her note was quite sharp that I ought to maintain an extra fuel supply in the vehicle. But frankly, Doctor Stingray used the last of my plutonium proving to herself that my technology works. Fortunately, according to the recorded memories she left, since that time she has outfitted the vehicle to work on fusion. "

The young man currently strapped to the table crossed his eyes. "But, couldn't you do that yourself?"

"Unfortunately, no." The older Xander shook his head. "The devices that would allow for a fusion-powered time machine have never been invented here. For that matter, the parts to invent the parts have never existed on this world, and while Doctor Brown knew the general theory and was able to install parts he'd purchased, he had to have something to work with. He was never enough of an expert on the field to create fusion power from scratch. Just like you've heard of transistors, and have probably used some, but couldn't invent one if your life depended on it. No scientist I've known could invent all of the technology he uses."

"So, back in time to do Wolverine again?" the younger guessed, knowing what he would do if he were in his older double's place.

"I believe you've captured the spirit of it, young man!" The older him cheered with another of those too-wide grins. "Yes, I think another trip through enchanted costumes to be in order for both of us. What do you say?"

The younger Xander smiled. "I'd say yes, Doc!"

The older Xander leaned forward and began undoing the younger one's restraints. "Good. You might as well continue to call me Doctor Brown, as that will eliminate confusion. And, it is a name I've grown used to."

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

We've seen just about every other costume. And most of them are lazy, and take the shortcut that any prop that would be cool or interesting, the character keeps.

Well, what if he didn't? What's more, what if easy power wasn't so easy? Or, given the character flaws of some of the main characters, it is an easy question to ask: what if things did not end happily?

This chap was all character setup. Next starts the real plot. 


	2. Chapter 2

Eighty Eight Miles Per Hour  
Chapter Two

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Lionheart  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

"So. A DeLorean?" The younger Xander asked.

"I find a sense of irony to be surprisingly prevalent in the universe," Doc Brown replied as the two men were putting away the Iron Man costume alongside the Sylia Stingray one in a suitcase beside the time vehicle. "I needed a car with stainless steel construction for the flux dispersal, went looking, and what did I find? It was not a 57 Chevy. So, I took it as a good omen and went to work. Indeed, I was fortunate, as it matched what I recalled of my original calculations precisely. I didn't have to do the spatial equations over again."

Xander shifted a little from foot to foot as he thought about that, still chewing over favored options. "So, if the magic from other worlds doesn't work right in this one, why didn't you dress as the most powerful magician of our world?"

Doc Brown grimaced as he told his young friend. "I'm afraid that would be Willow. I could easily enough have stolen a set of her clothes and used that as a costume to dress as her, as my responsibilities among the group had been steadily reduced to where the only thing they would trust me to do was their laundry. However, she had gained an addiction to dark magic that never quite left her, and I could not dress as her without risk of acquiring the same. That was unacceptable, as on more than one occasion she attempted to destroy the Earth, and if I were to acquire that temptation as well, then all would be lost."

Xander felt like he'd just had a fundamental underpinning of his universe ripped out. "I'm stunned, except, you know, for saying this."

Doctor Brown turned around to face the younger man. "Be reassured, that may not happen to your Willow. On this planet I was hoping to avert that disaster by preventing her from wearing a ghost costume this Halloween. That event was one of two that established a link between her and necromancy and dark magic that influenced and corrupted her for the remainder of her life." The scientist gave that disturbing grin again as he clapped hands in what was meant to be a reassuring fashion on his young double's shoulders. "So, last night I shot Willow with a tranq dart while she was still in her room at her home!"

"WHAT?" The young Xander freaked out. "You SHOT Willow?"

"No, no, no. Only with a tranquilizer. She's fine!" The Doctor reassured. "Then I called up Buffy's mother, pretending to be Willow's father, and excused her for the evening. Never having spoken to Willow's real father, Joyce took my call at face value, and you and Buffy never suspected a thing."

The scientist paused, thinking about adding more about the boy's oldest friend, but shook his head. The young Xander was already distressed enough. He didn't need to know what the Willow of the future had become. So, therefore, he needed a distraction. Swiftly, the scientist changed the subject, answering the original question, "But the major reason why I don't condone the native style of magic for our world is that every practitioner of it became a demon when our world was sucked into Hell, with their power and skill directly proportionate to the type of demon they became."

Xander felt cold, and replied numbly. "Yeah. That would be a good reason not to do that."

"Indeed," the mad scientist agreed, slamming the trunk closed. "You should have seen Giles." The scientist shivered. "I was always told he was quite the sorcerer in his youth. I never believed it until I saw what he had become. Cordelia was one of the lucky ones, she'd died before this all came to pass."

Then Doc Brown was darting off, and, after a moment of horror, Xander followed. "Wait. Wait, Doc. We should be helping them!"

"We are, my young friend. We are!" The older Xander shot his double a disarming grin that, while just as mad as all the others, managed this time to be encouraging. "Why, just a few more things and we can really begin to make a difference! C'mon! Before we leave to acquire new costumes we've got to get that memory pattern from Tony Stark programmed into you! Otherwise it could take you as many as thirty years to learn all he knew!"

A somewhat confused Xander headed after the Doc up those stairs.

After they both were gone, a figure in a dark trenchcoat materialized in the basement garage and glanced about in distaste at the super-secret underground headquarters that never ought to have been there. But, with just a small adjustment, it would never be seen again, so it would not have an impact on the destined scenario.

Whistler really hated jobs like this one. But he was bound to his duty. Sliding down under the car on one of those rolling planks that he'd forgotten the name of, he clipped a couple of wires, stripped the ends, and cross-connected them. Then he emplaced a small bomb-like device on some kind of detonator.

Sometimes securing the Balance really sucked.

OoOoO

"So, I'm going to become Iron Man." Xander slapped his hands together and rubbed them in glee. "I can handle that."

Doc Brown smirked, adjusting the machine. "I do not doubt your enthusiasm." He gestured his young friend into the seat and affixed the headband. "Ready?"

Xander gave him a thumbs up. "Yep. Give it all ya got, Doc."

With a huge grin to encourage his friend, the white haired scientist hit the red button on the keyboard, before shaking his head at the now comatose youth. "He'll be out for hours, trying to assimilate that much data."

And Doc Brown knew, having already been through it. He went to serve himself another cup of cocoa, and while tipping back the beverage, spoke to the air, "I wonder what his reaction will be when he discovers only half the technology we need for a proper Iron Man suit Tony Stark invented, and the other half never existed here. The Marvel world abounds with geniuses with dozens of patents, after all. With the sort of technology they use there, that has to change what resources are available to members of the scientific community."

He shook his head. "I did warn him that I'd never met a scientist who could invent all of the technology he uses." The Doctor stopped, thinking that over with a considering look to his face. "Yet that fact alone argues that we would do well to dress as more scientists out of Iron Man's world, just to possess more pieces of the technology pie the natives there consider ordinary."

He jotted 'Reed Richards' and 'Doctor Doom' down on a piece of paper and shoved it in his lab coat pocket. He poured himself another cup, musing that at least Tony Stark had a business sense that might be useful, and experience building up a technology corporation using his own patents.

Hours later, the young man awoke.

"Alright!" Xander cheered, then bounded down to the lab, then halted on seeing what was available there. "None of these are the right tools!" he proclaimed, as though cheated.

"I know that." Doc Brown said from the door, smiling. "I've had the same download you do, and truly amazingly advanced science appears to be the rule on Tony Stark's homeworld. I don't even know what principles most of the tools he expects to use operate on. But they manipulate molecules as easily as we staple paper. Still, that should not be too surprising, considering how many powersuits and other fantastic devices exist on that world, and the wealth of machinery Tony Stark was able to fit inside something less bulky than one of our scuba suits. But still, the only way to resolve our problem is to learn more of that world's science. Come along! I am thinking the right costumes could teach us most of what we want to know. Which do you prefer to dress as, Mister Fantastic or Doctor Doom?"

Xander eagerly followed his mentor to the time machine.

OoOoO

"So, how many scientists have you collected so far?' Xander asked from the passenger seat as Doctor Brown pulled the DeLorean out of the hidden underground parking garage.

"Actually, this is a new thing for me. I've only recently discovered it," the older man replied. "At first my obsession was on getting 'real power' as quickly as possible, and went for the most powerful costumes I could find. That is why I tried so many superheroes and mystic warriors. My focus was on fighting vampires, not on learning technology. Contrary to what you might think, I had only a few dozen or so uses of plutonium. I have not had infinite time to discover what worked and what didn't. It was only after spending virtually all my fuel supply on disappointments that I discovered I could rely on technology."

"Yeah, about that. Didn't you already invent fusion once? I mean, there was that flying, time traveling train there at the end of the final movie." The kid watched the secret garage close.

The Doctor gave a loopy grin, pulling them out onto the open road. "I think you are forgetting something: The real Doctor Brown was at first trapped in the old west, even when most of his original time machine worked. With the tools and equipment he had, he couldn't even repair a broken chip, so buried the DeLorean in a mine for his future self to work on."

"So, how did that train get built?" the teen pressed.

"You really haven't watched that movie recently, have you?" The Doctor asked with mild amusement, speaking as he began to accelerate the car. "He was only able to construct that train when Marty left his hoverboard behind. He was able to cannibalize that futuristic device for parts to make a second time machine. Then, only once he got back to the future was he able to have it converted for flight and fusion. If you'll recall, his final line in that movie was in reply to Marty's question: So where to now? Back to the Future? And Doctor Brown shook his head and told him 'Already been there'. Only then did that train take off and fly away."

"So, how did you get it to go to the future in the first place?" the young teen tried not to watch or think too hard about what was happening as the car got up to sixty, even though he was finding it impossible not to.

"You don't think they ran a hoverboard off a simple D-cell do you?" The Doc grinned. "No, the batteries of that movie's future have advanced along with their fusion and other power systems, and the ones used to support flight can be overcharged to an amazing degree, if you don't mind sacrificing their longevity. It's all part of an emergency mechanism, to enable a powered landing, even if other systems fail. And, with that in mind, it wasn't too hard to stick a lightning rod hooked to that battery on top of a mountain known for being struck by lightning and wait for a storm. With a battery to hold that charge, the timing was quite simple. No repeat of that split second stunt we had to pull the first time with that clock tower."

"Oh," Xander couldn't think of anything else to say, caught between glee and dread as the speedometer crept up to eighty.

Glee because he couldn't believe he might actually be doing this, reliving a movie experience in person, and dread, because part of him feared he might actually be doing this, and from what he recalled of the movie, one screw-up could wipe him out of existence.

Lightning flashed around the car, and one second they were in the outskirts of Sunnydale, the next on a blasted road under a purple sky shot through with orange and red streamers with Doctor Brown barely having time to swerve to avoid the burned out hulk of a bus lying across the road in their way.

Then, with a flash, everything went dead and they hit the bus anyway.

Moments later one of the DeLorean's doors popped open. "What happened?" Xander demanded as he climbed out from the vehicle, holding his bruises. Then his face went slack, and he took three stumbling steps to look out over a sinkhole where Sunnydale used to be.

"This looks like my homeworld," Doctor Brown stepped up beside him, holding a gauze bandage to the side of his face where a cut had been opened by the collision. He'd had to crawl out the passenger side door as the driver's side one was flat up against the bus, and probably wouldn't open again without some time in a garage. He gagged, made a face and covered his nose. "Smells like it too."

"This is your homeworld?" Xander gestured to indicate the dead grass, mutant, evil things passing for vegetation, and bizarre sky. There was a rancid stench on the air that constantly changed from one equally foul combination of awful odors to another, and there was an oppressive heat that had both men instantly soaked with sweat.

Not to mention the complete absence of Sunnydale behind them.

"This looks like something out of Mad Max!" Xander cried, pointing to the wrecked and burned out vehicles nearby. Everything man-made that could be seen was broken.

"Shhh!" The Doc grabbed his young friend's mouth and drew him into cover inside the wreck of a gutted SUV, gesturing with his eyes for Xander to look skyward.

The young man did so, and stilled as he saw a major demon fly by.

It was hard to miss something roughly twenty stories tall.

When it was gone, Doc whispered, "We're lucky that was a big one. They only prey on other demons. Anything smaller would have been attracted by all your shouting. C'mon!" Doc dragged Xander back to their time vehicle, quickly crawling underneath while his friend stared around in shock.

"Just as I thought." Doctor Brown exclaimed, coming out from under the vehicle bearing a bomb-like object he'd pulled out from the car's internal workings. "An EMP device. All of our onboard computers are scrambled. The memory cores have dumped, their data lost!"

"So we're lost, just like in the Slider's show?" The young Xander asked in fear.

He was answered by another grin, before the older him began diving into his pockets in search of something. "Fortunately, I anticipated this reaction, and prevented its success by the simple expedient of writing down your universe's address on this slip of paper!" The Doctor took said slip out of his coat pocket and showed it off to Xander with a too-wide grin.

"Great!" Xander began bouncing on the balls of his feet. "So that means we can go right back home!"

"Unfortunately, no." Dr. Brown shook his head. "This is not the first time I have tangled with the so-called Powers That Be, and let me reassure you from the start: they are not benign or benevolent, whatever they want you to believe. It was their plan all along that our world descend into madness and become just another Hell, and they were somehow enabled to play with the strings of Fate and Destiny to not only allow it to happen, but make any other outcome virtually impossible. If they are interfering with us this early, then to go back now would only encourage them to eliminate our interference again, only to be more successful this time. Seeing as how they can come and go whenever and wherever they will, it would be beyond human ability to stop them from interfering in some fundamental way that could destroy all we attempt to accomplish. In fact, they have done exactly that to me before."

"Hold it, Doc. What are you saying?" Xander looked concerned. "That we're stuck out here? That we'll never be able to go home?"

Again that white-haired grin. "Of course not, my boy! We simply have to find some way of preventing their interference. I know not what that could be, but" the doctor brought a confident hand down on the hood of their car. "We have all the time in the universe to find it."

"But, Doc! We've gotta go back! What about my friends?"

"Your friends will never realize you've been gone," Doc stated proudly. "We can return to the precise moment we jumped between dimensions. It'll be like you never left. Besides, we were fortunate this time, as our enemies could have done so much worse than send us across a few dimensions."

"Worse? How could it be worse?" Xander objected.

"Simple. This incident proves they had access to our time machine long enough to make alterations. Think about what could have happened if, instead of activating our Slider device, they instead reprogrammed the time travel function to ignore the control panel and instead take us to that road the moment one of your parents or grandparents were crossing it. Our vehicle, going at 88 miles per hour, without any warning or time to dodge, appears and impacts one of your ancestors. Think about it."

Xander did, and didn't like that thought at all. A crash at that speed, and the kid hit being one of his parents or grandparents so they never grew up and had him. Yeah, that could have officially sucked.

Further thoughts were interrupted by pounding on the inside of their trunk (which, on a DeLorean, was actually under what was normally the hood of the car). Both men rushed over. They opened the lid to find a mass of purple inside.

"What is Catwoman doing in my trunk?" Doctor Brown asked.

"It's Willow!" Xander lunged forward to help his best friend climb free of the vehicle, having seen the person under the costume faster than the former Batman, whose reactions naturally went a bit the other way.

Doc shook himself out of it. "Come on! We've got to get the time vehicle under cover. Fortunately, I have a lab not far from here."

"But how did Willow get here?" Xander demanded, confused.

"That would by Doctor Stingray's doing." The Doc tapped the side of his head. "You know we recall something from our costumes. I have unusual clarity of her memories, both from having 'been' her for thirty years, rather than the usual two hours, and for the transfer of her scientific knowledge later. I don't remember everything, but I know she had a plan to take advantage of my having tranquilized young Willow here. It was her hope to perhaps get the advantage of two costumes herself by recording and transferring Catwoman's skills while both of them were possessed. But traffic held her up, and she only had barely enough time to make it to the recording station herself, leaving Willow in the trunk."

Willow, still being woozy from the powerful tranquilizing drugs, did not reply.

"But why didn't you remember that before?" Xander pled, helping Willow to the passenger seat while Doc put the car in neutral.

"Costume memories aren't real unless reinforced. Usually that takes time and study. I had no reason to remember that until I saw her. Now get over here and help me push!"

OoOoO

"So this is your secret workshop? I was expecting something more like a cave." Xander looked around the old church building filled with machine parts in confusion, trying to pretend he had not just been involved in three fights for his life on the way there, against the small demons that were the local wildlife, one of which he could swear had once been a rabbit.

"A common mistake," Doctor Brown reassured him. "But caves are the preferred dwellings of the local demons. You might as well try to hide a pizza by putting it in a frat house refrigerator as try to conceal yourself in a cave on this planet."

"Well, at least we're safe in here." Xander pushed Willow down into a seat on a threadbare couch and crashed down next to her.

"Only after a fashion," the Doc corrected, finding a cutting torch he needed. "Churches that remain on a world converted to Hell no longer afford absolute protection. Instead, compare it to an unpleasant sensation, like perhaps diving into very cold water. A demon can do it if he has a reason. But most prefer to avoid it until necessary. So we are safe, only until one of them senses us and feels hungry enough to come in. So do keep your voice down."

"Xander who is he? Where is this place? What's going on?" While overcoming her tranq dose Willow had been contemplating the purple-red ground in silent horror, and gone catatonic at spotting her first major demon. But now, among more reassuring surroundings had begun to feel safe, and burst out in babble.

"This, young lady, is what your world is going to be in the next twenty years." Doctor Brown answered.

Willow's eyes went to Xander, or the one her age who she recognized as Xander, anyway. He nodded, and said, "This guy is from the future."

"Oh," Willow answered in a very small voice.

Xander gave her a reassuring hug. "Don't worry, Willow. The demons aren't *that* bad. You'll do fine until we get you home."

"But I'm not a hero like Buffy." The girl in a Catwoman costume felt small and weak.

"Pshaw!" Doctor Brown could not constrain his scorn. "Buffy is not a hero. The most effective weapon any true hero has is their mind, and Buffy does all of her thinking with her genitals. Her whole focus was on bouncing from one romantic situation to another, most often with the demons themselves. As far as she was concerned, saving other people from demons came as an unwelcome interruption to her sex life."

"But, she's got that whole super-strength deal going." Willow objected, while the younger Xander stood slack-jawed as the older him's response.

The older Xander was shaking his head sadly. "Being strong or powerful does not make a person a hero. Bulls are both stronger and faster than humans, yet the reason we call them 'hamburger' and eat them daily is that we outthink them. Humans have advantages in critical thinking, tool use, strategy and tactics that make the bulls superior physical abilities useless. But most of all, heroism is a *choice*! So, by that definition, Buffy is not any sort of hero at all. She had power thrust upon her, and never stopped whining about how she wanted it to go away - never, not in thirty years, did she ever once stop trying to escape her responsibilities. No, she was never any sort of hero. In fact, she did us more harm than good. What we *ought* to have been doing all along is applying those same human smarts vs creature strengths to demon hunting. But we can't do that when Buffy is around, because whatever her value as a front-line fighter, she more than makes up for in her errors and general incompetence as a leader - and she INSISTS on being the leader! Even though in general her problem solving skills can be paraphrased as 'Hulk SMASH!'."

"No." Doctor Brown insisted. "What we ought to be doing is NOT following a musclebound idiot with delusions of grandeur, getting into glorified mud wrestling matches with demons as a diversion from regular boughts of teen angst, but using our innate human cunning to outwit them! Magic, strength, these are nothing but tools. Buffy does not use her tools wisely, and if we cannot outthink our foes, we cannot win at all. Believe me, I've been around enough, recording enough data to know. We started off young and desperate, got successful, got cocky, and after brushing up close against it a number of times, eventually the Big Bads were us, only we'd become too arrogant to know it. Willow was the first, but not the last of us, to try and end our world, and one of those attempts succeeded."

Willow was frozen speechless, and Xander felt compelled to apologize by saying, "This guy is sorta an older version of me. So he knows what he's talking about."

Willow felt faint.

Xander felt compelled to change the subject. "So, Doc, about those Powers That Be you mentioned, can you give us the lowdown on them?"

"Indeed I shall." The Doctor burst into motion, grabbing at charts amidst old piles of paper. "I trust you know what a bureaucracy is. But nevertheless, allow me to explain it: It is a system whereby the responsibility of government is spread out over a great number of people. This allows the workload to be divided as many times as necessary so that no one person is overloaded. Now, the Eastern religions have postulated a Celestial Bureaucracy, whereby Heaven is run by this same system. Do you follow me so far?"

"Yes, Doc." Xander managed, distracted as he noticed Willow's frightened nods.

"Good," the mad scientist unintentionally overrode whatever the younger kid had been about to say next. "Now as you are well aware a bureaucracy can be corrupted. The way they are supposed to work, minor functionaries will handle minor duties, and when some large issue arises in their bailiwick, they are to pass it on to those higher in authority. But it is ultimately up to those minor functionaries to be responsible and report things accurately. Until they choose to notify their superiors, those superiors remain ignorant of any issues."

The mad scientist leaned close to the younger pair. "So, I want you to think for a moment. In the real world when bureaucrats go bad they abuse their authority and embezzle money or other assets, correct? Well, should the same thing be possible in an organization that ran worlds, what do you think those corrupt minor functionaries could do?"

Xander felt a chill pass down his spine. "But, wouldn't they get caught?"

Doctor Brown was upright, pacing around the workshop now. "Indeed they would. But, as in the real world, they plan for that eventuality. Where a normal bureaucrat might funnel their gains into offshore accounts and escape to someplace that doesn't have extradition treaties, a bureaucrat in a spiritual organization might do something very similar."

The older man hauled out a set of large, color photographs depicting creatures out of nightmare. "And *this* is the result! My boy, our worlds are being stolen by members of whatever spiritual organization is supposed to run them. Minor functionaries have decided to usurp the ordinary Destiny of our worlds, and THIS," he shook the photos, "is their aim!"

Xander took hold of one of the pictures, conscious of a terrified-silent Willow checking them out with him as he looked at a nightmare made flesh. "What is this?"

When Doc Brown spoke it was slow and serious. "That, my boy, is one of the so-called Powers That Be. Normally a petty bureaucrat. However, instead of using anonymous Swiss bank accounts and running to an island somewhere, to escape the judgments that would surely fall upon them for having plundered this reality for all it was worth, they have joined the other side, transforming this world into Hell as their shelter from Divine Retribution, and using the power plundered from it to become Hellgods."

"Wait a minute. 'Powers That Be'? What kind of a name is that?" Willow blurted.

"It is one of the clues that alerted me to what was going on." Doc scowled. "A god or major power is not afraid to go by a recognizable name. So I did some looking in the Watcher archives and other sources, and found them to be a group of minor spiritual functionaries who are supposed to see to the smooth running of this planet, but as we know they are instead working to corrupt it."

"So, if they are minor bureaucrats, what's to stop us from going to their boss?" Xander asked.

"They are." The Doc answered. "Imagine, if you will, trying to get in contact with a business executive to complain about his secretary - but that secretary is the one who opens all his mail and screens all of his calls. Naturally, I don't understand the particulars, so I will speak in generalities. But I think we can trust that, as insiders to the organization that is supposed to be running this world, they know the system better than we, and know just exactly how to disable the normal alarms that should exist to stop this sort of thing from happening. The man who maintains your burglar alarm is the one best able to defeat it, after all. I have also verified that they have somehow cut us off from contacting anyone that would put a stop to their manipulations. So I use the secretary analogy. We can't phone for help because they are the ones handling the call."

"So what can we do about it?" Xander demanded, feeling helpless.

"Nothing at all, at least directly." Doc admitted. "You will never even meet one in person until they have already totally succeeded in their aims and ascended to Hellgod status, ruling over a broken world. But they do use servants of their own. If you meet anything that identifies itself as a Balance Demon, kill it if you can."

"You know, Balance doesn't sound so bad." Xander mentioned lightly.

The response from his older self was almost explosive.

"Bah! Balance has nothing to do with it. Look at your own life experience so far. You have been surrounded by demons and the forces of Hell all your life. Well, where are the angels and forces of Heaven? If Balance were the goal, Balance would require them to be just as prevalent, since their opposites are already present. You can't fill one side of the scale and put nothing on the other. Balance doesn't work that way. Some might argue that Heaven is always helping. I'd say that help has to be pretty significant if it is supposed to equal the direct and personal involvement of the Forces of Darkness in overwhelming numbers, but I have yet to see any of it. More to the point, for twenty years our group fought off at least annual attempts to transform our world into Hell. You've already faced one of those. Some were escaped by only the narrowest margins and at great personal sacrifice. I lost my eye to one of those. You would think, if Balance were being observed, there would be exactly as many attempts, just as capable of success, to turn our world into a form of Heaven. But there has not been even one, and with the mystic powerhouses on our side, we would have sensed it. No, Balance to these people was nothing more than a convenient excuse, a buzzword that people respect and they could hide their activities behind. It had no more substance to it than a politician's promise not to raise taxes. They do not seek after Balance. As I said before, their aim is to transform our worlds into Hell, and I have seen them do it."

Doctor Brown spread his arms, indicating the oddly colored world filled with demons and strange smells. "You're living in one now! This used to be just like your world. Look at it! Is this what either of you want for your future?"

"No, Doc," Xander could admit to being more than a little creeped out by this place. It was like a bad cartoon, and the wildlife had already tried to eat him.

Doctor Brown spun a wrench around in his fingers. "Now, I just need to perform some minor repairs, and we can use the vehicle to get out of here."

"So, back to the costume shop?" Xander hoped.

"Remember how I said that I had had run-ins with the Powers-That-Be before?" Doc Brown asked without looking up from the repairs he was making. "They alerted me that no more time travel in their domain would be tolerated, and proved they had the power to alter my past in such a way as to wipe me out of existence. Still, each set of Powers That Be rules over only a single world in the multiverse. I was able to escape mine by going to yours. Now I believe a minor alteration to the settings of our Slider device could take us to a world not too unlike this one, where hopefully Ethan Rayne is pulling his costume tricks again."

"Ok, Doc." Xander shrugged.

Willow had started rubbing her nose. "Anything to escape the smell," she agreed. And as she said it, Xander had to grimace and nod in agreement. So far the stench of Hell reeked in a whole new and entirely revolting way each minute, so there was no chance of ever getting used to it. The stench was almost worse than the threat of being eaten by a demon.

"Believe me, the food tastes worse than the smells," Doctor Brown reassured.

OoOoO

Xander was sitting in the passenger seat, holding Willow, still in her Catwoman costume, bridal-style in his lap to fit in the cramped space, when the back wall of their church was torn open by a two-story tall menace that looked like classic winged fiend.

"Punch it!" Xander screamed.

Doctor Brown didn't need to be told, having already put their vehicle into gear and rammed down the gas pedal, smashing through the thin boards he'd used for a garage door on the major hole in the side of the ruined church building.

The demon scattered apart the remainder of the church like it was made of child's blocks as it followed, shrieking in delight in the hunt, after them.

They careened around a corner, dodging an overturning milk truck overgrown with a weird fungus that blinked at them with eyestalks, before pulling onto a more clear section of road, the demon taking wing to follow along behind them.

Doc hit a control on the dashboard, and the familiar doughnut shaped ripple in space formed before their vehicle, like a drain on the pool of reality, and they drove forward into the vortex, escaping that world.

Xander and Willow both breathed sighs of relief as the smells were gone, and they appeared in an ordinary, not purple-orange, night, only to have the demon pop through the vortex behind them.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

I would have been happy to have them drive away in something approaching peace and safety. But I realize our action-addicted people of today want some destruction and drama. So I hope you enjoyed that closing scene. 


	3. Chapter 3

Eighty Eight Miles Per Hour  
Chapter Three

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Lionheart  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Having a demon roaring at your heels is bound to draw a lot of attention. However, one of the very few things that can compare is suddenly appearing in a warzone.

Though the colors of the dirt and sky were that of an ordinary Earth night, and plants seemed normal, rather than the Hellish overtones of all those things before, the wreck and ruination of human civilization seemed about the same. Craters were in the streets, with burned and broken vehicles strewn everywhere, and buildings stood in ruins, where they stood at all.

And all around, everything was grey, as though fires had raged out of control and nothing had been done to clean up after. So a fine layer of ash had settled everywhere.

All of this would have been bad enough, except that these facts, important though they were, all filtered in later. What the occupants of the DeLorean noticed at first were the blasts of laser fire all around them. Explosions were everywhere. It seemed that giant, lumbering, tracked machines along with some type of stainless steel flying ones, were waging war against dirty humans dressed in gray coveralls hiding amongst the ruins.

And it became abundantly clear just what they were facing when the DeLorean rammed into a human sized skeleton of steel and pistons, and the trio of time and dimension travelers stared into glowing red eyes and realized they were seeing through the windshield a real-life Terminator unit, clinging to their hood.

Crumpling the metal of their car in one hand to maintain hold, the Terminator raised its laser rifle in the other to aim at the humans inside of the vehicle.

Xander and Willow screamed. Doc, who appeared to have had his fright reflex burned out by experience long ago, simply swerved the vehicle as hard as he could, yanking hard on the steering wheel even while pouring on the gas.

They flew over an embankment, just barely escaping the diving claws of the demon on their heels tearing furrows in the road where they would have been.

Time seemed to pause, stretching out into an eternal moment in mid-air as the Terminator unit, which had not been dislodged by the maneuver, let spray a burst of automatic laser fire right into the driver's side area of the car, shattering the windscreen and punching through Doc Brown with at least one bolt of ruby lightning.

Then, as though to make up for having gone slow before, the next few moments passed by in a blur. The car crashed into an overturned vehicle, finally shaking loose the Terminator as the DeLorean rolled and bounced downhill. Emerging almost unscathed, Xander and Willow, clutching new bruises, came to a stop as they saw the demon behind them suddenly become the focus of both sides of the battle, with men and machines both pausing in their fights with each other to spew massed laser fire into the creature from Hell.

The astonishing thing was the beast actually survived this combined fire for a moment before exploding in a burst of foul-smelling gas, then raining down as harmless dust.

Xander and Willow were still too shocked to move until one of the human soldiers appeared at their elbows to whisper, "Come with me if you want to live."

Spurred into action, Xander's one brain cell not devoted to shock at the moment turned him back to the vehicle, not even realizing until that moment that he and Willow, in their daze, had wandered about twenty feet away from the wreck of the time machine. "But... Doc!"

Just then the driver's side door popped open, and Doc Brown was there, staring in equal shock at them, one of his hands held over an inch wide hole blown completely through his gut, where blood could not quite conceal the blinking of lights nor the glitter of machine parts within where his spine ought to be.

That was when one of the pickup trucks used as mobile fighting platforms by the humans zigged when it should have zagged, and got caught by a burst of violet laser fire, thrown and exploding, to land right on top of the crashed DeLorean.

OoOoO

The next two weeks were frightening and confusing for the teens, brought underground, checked out by dogs, then kept down there to dwell among the other human refugees. In the tunnels there was never enough of anything: food, light, heat, you name it, they were short on it. Most people down there had never even heard of a bath.

It was, as far as shared traumatic experiences go, up there with a major shipwreck. Willow spent all of her time clinging close to Xander, and both of them spent most of that time in a daze.

What changed was when a soldier passing by stopped, dumped two sets of rifles and uniforms on them, and said, "Alright. We need to replace casualties. You two are up. Try not to get killed out there."

It was, as far as basic training went, vastly inadequate to Xander's way of thinking. However, Willow was already scurrying into the clothes. Dirty as the old uniforms were, they hadn't had any chance to wash or change clothes for over two weeks, and the uniforms were cleaner than anything they'd been wearing.

Not to mention Willow's catwoman suit had been a costume, and costumes are not usually meant for durability. They typically get worn one night, then go back in the closet for a year or more. So manufacturers typically cheated on the materials, making them cheap, and so the one outfit Willow had on her during their two dimension jumps had begun to disintegrate a little under the heavy use and lack of proper care it had been getting lately.

Rather than submit to nudity as those gradually decreasing rags split to reveal something important, she put on the uniform gladly, bad smells and old stains and all.

Sighing, Xander followed her lead. It looked like they were in the army now.

On the plus side, they had laser weapons.

On the bad side, the enemy had them too.

Wandering out of the tunnels in the sort of haze felt by those who know they are going to die, Xander and Willow were barely in the clear before they heard a whisper, "I knew they were going to send you two out eventually."

"Doc!" Xander dropped his rifle to hug the older man, then scolded, "Doc, I thought you said when you made 'minor adjustments' to the slider device that we'd end up in a similar world, not something totally different!"

Doc was unruffled. "Actually, when you think about it, these worlds are very similar indeed. Both are near-future apocalyptic scenarios wherein the world of man has been destroyed and the few remaining humans are being actively hunted by things much more powerful than they. The only real change is how they came about. In ours, the world was destroyed by demons, here it was by our own creations. Either way, the end result makes little difference."

"Yeah, well, Doc, where have you been these past two weeks?"

"Working. The frame of our DeLorean was destroyed. I had to find a replacement vehicle in which to install the time machine. Scrounging for parts has occupied most of my time."

"Yeah, but how did you survive out here? Didn't the machines try and finish you off?"

The Doc grinned. "No, actually, they take me for one of them. Apparently, and this is pure speculation here, there is some sort of translation effect as one enters a new universe. Do you recall how I told you the laws of magic appear to be different for each world? And none of the styles I'd mastered allowed me to tap into the native energy supply of our worlds? Well, I am guessing that more costumes than just wizards could have that problem. Here, Terminators are real. One Halloween I'd dressed as a Terminator. If there is something called a Celestial Bureaucracy at work behind the scenes, I imagine there to be something like border guards and customs stations taking effect where we are not aware of it. As we entered this world, one of those might have checked my spiritual passport, so to speak, found it marked 'Terminator' and where in most worlds that stamp would be meaningless, here those really exist, so it made the requisite changes to my anatomy. Instead of bones, I have a hyper-alloy combat chassis, and I've been a little reluctant to check for my brain, but suspect that I am currently running on a computer processor instead. That fact alone makes me paranoid, as computer data can easily be rewritten, and now all of my knowledge and personality are vulnerable to hacking. So I would prefer to leave this reality as quickly as possible, in hopes those changes can be undone and I can become a real human again."

Xander froze as two red-eyed Terminator skeletons walked up from around a corner. Doc simply waved them off. "I am interrogating these two flesh units. Go, continue your patrol."

And, the amazing thing was, the Terminators did so, just turning and walking away.

Xander felt numb.

Willow clutched her rifle to her chest, looking like a scared mouse.

"Well, that's a useful ability," Xander quipped after a few minutes.

"I'd trade it for the ability to pee." Doc started ushering them off through paths in the rubble. "All those organs you never really think about. Truly, you never know what you've got til it's gone. You know one of the great pleasures in life to be a juicy hamburger and a milkshake? But without a digestive tract all they are is pretty. Sleep is another thing. You lay down tired and stressed, and by morning your subconscious has discarded over half your problems and you awake refreshed and renewed. That's something you don't enjoy when your body is incapable of shutdown, except in an unfortunately total sense."

"Hamburger?" Willow stopped, then clutched at Doc's chest. "Do you know where there is food?"

Xander cocked an eyebrow at the doc, wondering if the old man knew that was more words than Willow had said to anyone but him in the full two weeks. The girl had kinda been in shock. Still hadn't come out of it, really. Then the boy reviewed her question. "You know, I could be kinda interested in that myself."

Doc stopped and stared at them. "I can offer you a few cans of spam now, or as much as you can eat of anything you want if you can just wait twenty minutes."

OoOoO

"I still maintain: this is a poor idea," the doc objected as, wearing a chef's apron, he fried up what had to be their third can each of delicious, toasty spam in a restaurant kitchen that had somehow escaped destruction. "We should use the time vehicle. If you had spent as much time walking, as you already have eating, we could be there by now. Then you could have whatever you want, from whatever restaurant strikes your fancy."

Neither Willow nor Xander argued with the man. That would require using their mouths for something other than eating, which they did not care to do. Somehow, somewhere, Doc had identified untouched supplies of canned goods, and they were feasting on corn, pear slices, and applesauce, as well as bottles of soda and their delicious fried spam.

It was a banquet fit for kings, as far as they were concerned.

Estimating by their slowed pace that they'd had as much as their bodies could hold, despite their desires to keep eating, the doc shut off the electric stove, then unplugged it from the cable that ran to his hip socket. Putting away the apron, he declared, "Well, at least neither of you are so foolish as to demand we use one of the cooking tubs and water from the cistern to bathe yourselves."

OoOoO

"Do you have any idea how much of a risk we are taking?" the doc demanded as he made sure to carefully regulate the heat the gas burner was delivering to the tubs full of teenagers. "We could be at a hotel by now. Surely the Marriott or Hilton would have facilities you'd prefer! Nice, fluffy towels and a warm bed after. Doesn't that sound nice?"

"Yeah, Doc," Xander's voice came from beyond the sheet metal partitions they'd set up for modesty around the baths. "But how would we afford that?"

The Doc started pacing, almost tearing his hair out in frustration over the delay. "Does it look like anyone in the here and now is using cash to you? People would trade all of the gold in the world for a cat - because you could EAT the cat! There are uncounted bank vaults and jewelry stores that are sitting open and undefended right now because nobody alive wants what is inside them. We could fill a moving truck with hundred dollar bills if we wanted to!"

The poor man stopped pacing, grasping at his head. "No. I did not just say that. Tell me I did not say that."

OoOoO

"You know, Doc," Xander said from atop the piles and piles of cash in the bed of the farm truck they had found. "I just thought of something: How are we going to get all this cash back in time with us? I mean, you could bury a DeLorean under this pile of swag!"

"Don't you think I know that?" Doc shouted from the cab, where he was driving. "Why do you think I've been trying to get you hedonistic creatures to desist? The longer we take, the higher the probability of something happening to our time vehicle!"

Suddenly looting didn't seem so fun anymore. Xander gave a guilty look to Willow, smacked his lips and said, "Yeah. Well, sorry Doc. I guess this got a little out of hand."

"A *little*!" Doc shrieked over the steering wheel as he controlled their vehicle around piles of rubble, distant laser shots streaking in the distance. "Here we are in a war zone, with every person, place or thing in danger, explosions going on all of the time, the landscape is getting rearranged by battles, humans hiding everywhere they can fit, and we have ONE chance to escape it all to safety, and you think your delay got a LITTLE out of hand?"

Put that way, Xander even started to feel a little bashful. Suddenly the piles of gold and jewels didn't seem as important as they had a while ago.

OoOoO

His guilt only increased when they arrived back to find the doc's new time-vehicle crawling with human soldiers, some poking around the time circuits and flux capacitor, already having dismantled parts of it, as well as many others forming a human chain unloading boxes and boxes of laser weapons and other technology Doctor Brown had carefully stored there - looting it, in other words.

The Doc had chosen a bus this time, heeding Doctor Stingray's advice that he plan for something with a little more storage capacity than a little, two-seat sports car - capacity that was being proven by the crates of laser weapons, tech and tools being removed from it.

"So, Doc, where did you get all that stuff?" Xander asked as they dismounted the farm truck, Willow still clutched to his side and looking as though she had no intention of letting go.

The scientist gave his younger version a glance. "Didn't I tell you I spent the last two weeks searching for parts to make a working time vehicle? This world is not like Walmart, you don't go to the automobile aisle and ask the clerk nicely to pick you out a big list of parts by their numbers. You have to scrounge for them, and when you scrounge, you might find anything, from car parts to old baseballs, tennis shoes to Tokyo Bay souvenirs. And on this world in particular, loads of old weapons and abandoned bits of advanced technology. I didn't turn up my nose at anything valuable, and simply gathered what looked useful to study later. Or did you forget that we are still trying to learn more science? They certainly have examples here of things we never knew."

Xander blushed, feeling more guilty than ever and hugging Willow a little closer for the reassurance she offered. "Yeah, well, you're certainly taking well to being robbed."

Doc shrugged. "What point is there in losing my temper now? By this point, everything I'd gained is lost, the time vehicle ruined. Getting upset won't change anything." He folded his arms and stared ahead, to where the vessel of their safety had just been lost. "Our one ticket out of here just got torn apart by a bunch of curious monkeys. Call it another ten years before I can scrounge together enough tools and parts to make another - that's what it took for the first time machine. Assuming, of course, I don't get everything I need stolen from me by the local savages the very moment I find it. Gosh, I sure am glad we have all that cash and gold now. It'll be really useful going to all those shops and merchants that don't exist in the here and now. It'll make the next ten years really comfortable, I assure you."

He nodded sagely, refusing to look at the younger pair.

"I think I'd prefer it if he blew his top," Xander whispered to Willow.

Then the soldiers materialized from the rubble all around them, pointing their laser guns at the trio. A lead officer stepped forward, looking Doc in the eye, and asked, "What did you say about a 'time vehicle'?"

Xander swallowed in fear, but had not anticipated the doc's response.

"That," Doc waved his hand at the bus, seeming totally unconcerned that his secret was out. "My own invention. If you're through tearing it apart, I can show you how it works. Would any of you care to go back to some point in the past where you might be able to prevent this horrible apocalypse from happening?"

Xander and Willow were both gaping at the older man now.

That stopped the officer cold. "You can *do* that?" one of the younger soldiers, a girl, pressed forward in her eagerness to ask.

Doc gave her his demented grin. "Kid, you ain't seen nothing yet."

OoOoO

Fifty heavily armed human soldiers crammed into every seat on the bus, with extra space crammed standing room only. Xander had Willow in his lap, arms around each other, just beside the seat where the officer was giving Doc, in the driver's seat, orders.

Cash and jewels were just thrown on the floor, along with ration bars and anything else the soldiers could find that someone had deemed useful for their mission.

Doc was leaning out the door, yelling at a couple of Terminators who had showed up. "I'm just going to disintegrate the molecular structure of all these humans. If they find the situation pleasurable enough, I can release a few and they'll tell all their friends, and I'll have lines of them queued up waiting for their chance to be destroyed. So if you could clear the road, I'll proceed with my experiment!"

Doc closed the door and the Terminators turned away, some were even clearing vehicle wrecks off the road before them. Doc sat back in his chair to find the muzzle of a laser rifle in his ear. "You better have been joking!" the officer hissed.

"You just have to know how to talk with them," Doc protested, putting the bus in gear and muttering, "really, they're just like big, metal kids. They only want one thing, and if you tell them they are getting it, they are fine with whatever you do."

The humans soldiers listened, watching warily, and in some measure of disbelieve, as a pair of the big, metal hunter-killers actually stood watch over the road to make sure the doc's 'experiment' went uninterrupted.

None of them could quite believe what was going on.

"Doc," Xander couldn't resist squeaking out his question from behind the driver's seat. "What about the Powers That Be? All that talk about no more time travel or they'd erase you from existence?"

"You seem to have forgotten the important point," Doc shouted over the noise as he flipped the time circuits on, the dashboard coming to light with newly repaired readouts. "That every time you jump dimensions, you get a new set of Powers That Be. So what those ones said there, doesn't apply here!"

A few HK drones flew over their heads, actually probing the night for things that might disturb the bus full of humans.

After that, further conversation got cut off by the noise. Not having the best suspension, and the roads being in a critical state of disrepair, the ride started to get very bumpy as they accelerated.

When they got to eighty eight and the bus disappeared with a flash of light and smoke, leaving only twin trails of fire in its wake, Skynet actually considered the experiment at disintegrating humans a success - except for the loss of the sole Terminator unit that knew how to do it, and the lack of pleased humans going off to tell their friends how fun it was.

The HK drones then returned to their normal war of hunting the fleeing humans.

OoOoO

With a flash of light the bus appeared on a freeway that, while it had been featureless and unrecognizable in the future, with the added context of buildings and signs that had been missing then, was now obviously southbound out of LA, California.

It was only then, when they'd flashed into existence in a past where everything was normal, where the world looked clean and functional again (although Xander reflected this was probably the first time anyone had ever seriously referred to LA as *clean*, and meant it. But it really was, in comparison) that it became obvious what a mess *they* were!

The bus was half-wrecked. It's only redeeming factor was that it was functional. On the battlefields of the future, that was all that mattered. In the here and now of a different LA, the dents and crushed in body panels, smashed side windows and more or less missing paint job, not to mention the rust and dust and fused on coating of grey ash, stood out like a sore thumb among tide of rainbow traffic made up of mostly well-put-together cars.

And that was without even considering the cargo of grey and grim soldiers in grey uniforms and holding rifles, looking every bit as beaten and worn and filthy as their bus was.

Forget standing out like a sore thumb. They were standing out like a gun-toting, foaming-at-the-mouth terrorist at a garden party!

With that in mind, he was amazed that it took as long as it did for the familiar blinking of cop lights to appear in their rear-view. But they were already ten minutes south of San Diego before someone decided to pull them over. Willow was napping, relaxed at last, so Xander leaned forward to ask Doc, "Hey Doc! What took them so long? I though they were going to pull us over within the first minute of our arrival!"

"Partly," Doc answered, shouting over his shoulder, "I have been scrupulously obeying all traffic laws. Partly, while beat up and dirty, I made sure that we were as close to street-legal as conveniently possible when I was repairing the bus. But mostly, as suspicious as we look, I thought it prudent to secure a set of license plates and tags that were actually current and registered for the year we are in."

"So why are we pulling over? We've got a bus full of psychos with guns! Any cop worth his badge will arrest us for sure!"

Doc finished pulling their vehicle to a stop at the side of the road. "Think about vampires, or Terminators. The appearance of normalcy can often be one of the greatest weapons. If an enemy believes he knows what to think, that gives you an advantage when you change the rules. Besides, there is a chance we can conclude this peaceably, and be on our way."

Xander stared out of the back of the bus, certain the cop would call for backup. But the guy just got out of his car and came up alongside. Doc opened the door for him, crying out, "Greetings, officer! My name is Doctor Emmett Brown, and I am currently taking this bus load full of rich, white Americans south across the border into Mexico to pick melons. By the way, we have a large amount of garbage on board. Could you help us by disposing of some of it?"

With that, Doc reached down to the floor and began picking up handfuls of cash, which he then threw out the door on top of the cop.

The cop survived about three double handfuls of that hitting him in the face before he said with a perfectly straight face, "I believe that your identification checks out. Be on your way."

The bus was pulling away before the cop had picked up all of the cash. Xander was staring back and forth from the man to the cargo of gun-toting soldiers. "I can't believe that worked!"

"I believe the guns trained on him when I was raining cash down over him might have had something to do with it," Doc answered. "Picking a fight with a bus load full of obviously insane nut jobs, versus accepting handfuls of cash would be an easy choice for most of us."

Less than an hour later they were across the border.

OoOoO

Doc pulled the bus into one of the less famous vacation resort spas and popped open the door, waddling out bearing a huge armful of cash, which he then dumped on the registry desk. "Hi, I believe you have an appointment for my group?"

The registration clerk looked up at him with a broad smile. "Oh, yes sir." Clapping, he summoned employees to go assist the debarking soldiers.

"Good," Doc brushed hair out of his face. "We're a bunch of coal miners who haven't been out of the dig site for years, so excuse the dust and our lack of social skills. We'll be wanting the full makeover for everyone. Food, and plenty of it, haircuts, manicures and massages for anyone who will put up with it. Oh, and everything we've got is filthy, so we'll be doing a lot of shopping for clothes and things. So why don't you just make some tailors available, get everything done that way?"

He shoved the whole pile of cash forward to the beaming young clerk, who said with a smile, "I believe we can handle it, sir."

OoOoO

Willow blinked as her soaking on a beach in a hot tub was interrupted by a small number of papers and cards being handed to her.

"Hey, Doc. Where did you get all the false IDs?" Xander asked, receiving his own set.

"Simple!" Doc grinned. "According to the official, but rarely published, figures of both governments, one in ten Mexicans lives and works illegally in the United States. For anything to be done in such large numbers, a support network exists for it, most probably with complicit support among US government agencies considering its long-term success. It's only the poor, unconnected souls who try and sneak across. That was why I knew we had to come here. Because having this many people with us, it was all too likely we'd have trouble with the law if we didn't have some cover story, and supporting documentation. But now, washed and groomed and in period clothes, with all the necessary paperwork, we should be able to operate as we please! At any rate, prepare to move out!"

"Already?" Willow protested, standing up and her bikini shedding water as she held her iced fruit drink in one hand and new identity papers in the other. "But we only just got here."

"Miss Rosenberg, we have already been here two weeks acclimating our troops to the local social environment. That's plenty of time. Besides, we are on a tight schedule. We would not even have had this much time, save that I planned for it, and arrived that much earlier ahead of our first interception date. Do not forget: we have a world to save!"

"Oh. Right. Sorry." she blinked, then lowered her head and scurried off to her room to get her new stuff packed.

Xander sighed, gazing after his old friend. She'd been a mess since starting this whole trip through time and universes. First she'd had her beliefs about Buffy challenged by this future him, then told HER future self tried to end the world more than once, made a quick trip to Hell, then lived two weeks underground being hunted by Terminators... No, this spa had been good for her, but he'd honestly hoped she'd have more time to pull herself together.

That, or a yellow crayon.

As it was, she'd been sticking to him like glue. It's not often a person gets all their safety and illusions stripped away within a couple of hours and are forced to reinvent themselves while there were still nasty things out to kill them. He'd become Willow's safety blanket, and frankly, he was certain she would have jumped his bones down in those tunnels if there had been any shred of privacy.

Xander took a look at the future soldiers gathering together, now all dressed as regular tourists, complete with large collections of cameras. About the only thing that stood out from the ordinary was that each and every one of them held a camcorder case, in which was stored their laser rifle. "How much did all this cost?"

"Trust me." Doc grinned, shaking his head. "You don't want to know."

"But aren't you worried that we might run out of cash?"

"With all that swag? No. But even if we did, we could just knock over the compound of one of the minor drug lords. No matter how tough they think they are, our troops are tougher and more experienced. Plus, we've got lasers. If it came to that, we could secure all the funding we'd ever need by stealing it from those criminals who are drugging America's children."

"So, where to now?"

Doc gazed off into the distance. "Tomorrow will be the twelfth of May in the year nineteen eighty four, and according to the movie, at precisely one fifty two AM at Griffith observatory in Los Angeles, the first Terminator sent by Skynet will arrive in the past. It's mission, to assassinate Sarah Connor, the mother of John Connor, before he can become the rallying point of human resistance to the extermination of man by the machine."

"So," Xander guessed. "We're going to protect her, right?"

Doc grinned. "Yes. But not in the way you are thinking."

OoOoO

"There he is!"

"Fire!"

Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!

Doctor Brown stepped up to the cooling corpse of the Terminator unit just described and checked his watch. "Skynet's temporal adjustment attempt number one, terminated at one fifty eight AM precisely, here at Griffith observatory in Los Angeles."

He moved aside, so the soldiers could collect what was left of the Terminator's body, so they could throw the remains into a steel smelter whose guard had been bribed to turn a blind eye tonight.

Guy probably thought they were mob, wanting to dispose of a body.

Doc, cocked his head. "Which we are, after a fashion." He looked skyward. "Interesting that Skynet's temporal displacement apparatus should also be accompanied by an electrical disturbance, when the particulars of operation are so different." He shook his head. "I only wish I'd had an opportunity to study that time machine."

Willow looked up over the muzzle of her smoking gun. "You know? That wasn't so bad!"

Xander peeked up over the muzzle of his own. The other troops already in motion. "You know what? You're right. In the movies, that guy was an unstoppable killing machine. But with the right weapons, he was pretty easy to take down."

Doc stepped up next to them. "Always remember, my friends. With the right tool, any situation can be easy."

OoOoO

A flash of light and lightning accompanied a much restored bus appearing out of nowhere.

"Alright, when are we , Doc?"

"Quite nearly eleven years in the future from when we were a moment ago, Xander, and two weeks before the next Terminator is due to arrive."

"Two weeks? Great!" Xander grinned. "So, back to the vacation spot in Tijuana!"

"No," Doc opened the bus door and debarked with the soldiers without looking back. "I'm afraid we have a little more work to do ahead of time, this time."

OoOoO

The T-1000 appeared in mid-air, then plopped down into the vat of molten steel waiting beneath it.

The thing reared up, and...

"Fire!"

Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!

Doc was leaning casually up against the tire of a large construction vehicle watching when at last the thing stopped moving, destroyed by the temperatures of the molten steel it bathed in - with any attempt to escape met by massed laser fire.

Xander lowered his rifle. "You're instilling me with a lot of confidence, Doc."

Doc clapped him on the shoulder and just smiled, leading him around the first truck of liquid nitrogen they'd had on reserve just in case the first trap hadn't worked, on over to where Willow was operating the computerized controls of the smelting vat they had, quite illegally, installed beneath the busy freeway overpass where they knew the T-1000 was to appear.

She raised her face and brightened. "Tijuana?"

Doc smiled. "Why not?"

OoOoO

"Truly a fascinating effect," Doc Brown commented as they watched the time bubble of the third of Skynet's temporal displacements form in the window of an LA ladies clothing store.

"Fire!"

Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!Zap!

FWOOSH!

Willow clicked the key combination the cut off the liquid nitrogen spray and signaled Xander to bring forward the heavy construction equipment they used to lift up the whole part of the sidewalk the T-X once stood on and was now smeared over, transferring that to another truck full of the coolant that would keep the cargo below operational temperatures while they transferred it to the local smelting plant they'd paid for and set up for this purpose, using investments they'd made in the past.

"We really can't be too careful," Doc commented, striding over to over the work being done. "The T-X series had only a single unit that I'm aware of, but it included every advance in cybernetic technology available to Skynet before its final destruction by the human resistance - A last ditch effort to reverse its own destruction by rewriting the past. Nothing should be left to chance concerning its annihilation."

OoOoO

BOOM!

"Well, that was easy." Xander nodded towards the destruction, Willow in his arms.

"Yes," Doc Brown replied. "A simple enough matter of redirecting the 9/11 terrorists who would have slaughtered thousands into driving alone at the steering wheels of truck bombs into certain labs that were to have developed Skynet, ending their research."

Willow smirked. "Part of that is you bought out their parent companies and cut their funding."

"Truly amazing what you can do when you have a pile of cash, and the history of the stock market's prices over a thirty year period," Doc agreed casually. Then checked his watch. "And, any second now..."

The human soldiers wavered like a heat mirage, then vanished. Their bus did the same, only to be replaced by the original, somewhat beat-up DeLorean, and Doc Brown breathed a sigh of relief, touching his own chest, then taking his pulse.

Xander and Willow were both staring around in confusion. "What? What's going on? What just happened, Doc? Willow's jewelry just vanished away."

The mad scientist's smile was as broad as they'd ever seen it. "That, my friends, was the Ripple Effect, finally catching up to us." He went over and sat on the hood of their car. "Do you recall the movies? How Marty spent so much time trying not to be erased by the very actions he'd caused in his own past?"

He pointed to where the human soldiers were, but were no longer. "That just happened to them. The future that spawned those warriors no longer exists. The ordinary world was not destroyed, so the one that spawned them never got created. There was no war where machines rose up, trying to exterminate man. Terminators were never invented. It's all over. And, more importantly to me personally, I'm human!"

The Doc spread his arms in joy.

Xander looked down at the rags he was wearing. Willow was back in her catwoman costume that by now was strips of rags tied together by more rags. "But, we're broke! All of our clothes and stuff is gone. Plus, what happened to our bus?"

Doc's smile never faltered as he relaxed casually lying over the hood of their car. "Don't you see? With no apocalyptic future, no wasteland of unguarded banks and jewelry stores, we never had a chance to loot anything either! If we went there now, all of those places would have their normal guards and security measures in place protecting them."

"And the bus?" Willow asked, scrounging around for a bit of newspaper to wrap around her middle for more modesty.

"Never happened," Doc responded, rolling over on his side to look at them. "Think about it. The road we were on when we arrived in this universe would be unblemished, with no craters or potholes to dodge around. Plus, there would have been no battle going on, so no reason to swerve, or go over that embankment, and finally crash! And without that crash, what reason did we have to stop and convert another vehicle to use as a time machine?"

"But what about the demon, Doc?" Xander pressed.

By way of response, Doc rolled around to climb into the back of the vehicle, rooting around for something. "I took the liberty, when we were in the future, of printing out Skynet's report on that encounter. And now, if the movies are accurate... Yes!"

He returned, brandishing a newspaper, eyes alight as he declared, "That document has now transformed into this!"

Xander and Willow took the newspaper together, reading the headlines above the picture of the demon. "Huge Special Effect Used As Target During Weapons Test?"

"Precisely!" Doc couldn't stop his grin. "I suspect that universes have antibodies, natural resistance to disruptive elements introduced from other worlds. On ours, that resistance has been driven very low, like an immune system so battered by disease it barely functions anymore, but here it appears to be functioning perfectly. That demon following us was plainly and immediately identified as something that could not be allowed in this world, so it was removed. First by appearing in mid-battle, then, when that battle no longer happened, by being diverted a few miles north to a weapons test area right as the Navy was getting to show off some of their new ship-mounted laser weapons to congressmen! Either way, that demon entered this world and immediately died!"

"So, we're safe?" Xander wanted to confirm.

"From the demon, yes." Doc explained, popping open both doors on the DeLorean. "But I don't think we dare do any more time traveling on this world, as most likely our efforts in bringing to pass the elimination of one destined future have marked us, too, as a disruptive influence. So, for safety sake, we ought to immediately head to another world."

Xander smiled, heading toward the passenger side. "That's alright by me, Doc."

"Will they have clothing there?" Willow followed behind, still covering her near-shredded catwoman costume with a sheet of newspaper wrapped around her middle.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

And that's a wrap. All of the explanations should be done now, so what's left is action, or at least adventure. I hope. 


	4. Chapter 4

Eighty Eight Miles Per Hour  
Chapter Four

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Lionheart  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

The slider portal deposited the DeLorean on a bleak plain under a black sky, with no living thing to be seen anywhere.

"Doc, where are we?" Xander asked with his arms around a newspaper and rag clad Willow. "This almost looks as bad as that Hell dimension."

"Indeed it does." Doc tried peering out through the dim light cast by their headlights. "But I do not recognize..."

Then a red-eyed, squid looking machine reared up out of nowhere.

"AAAAaaHHHH!" The trio in the car screamed.

Doc instantly had the car in gear and was speeding away as fast as he could accelerate. "Now I recognize this world. Matrix! The movie came out after your time. An apocalyptic future not unlike the Terminator world, where human life has been virtually extinguished by machines. I suppose this is what we get for setting such a minor jump out of an admittedly terrifying world."

"Doc! It's catching up! You gotta do something!" Xander screamed, having been looking out the rear window.

Doc tapped the dash as their wheels sent grey dust flying in their rush to escape. "Time circuits aren't getting any reading! I don't know when or where we are! So I can't engage the time machine!"

"Do something!" Xander and Willow shouted together, faces contorted with fear as dozens of other squidies joined the first.

Then they topped a rise and found that in their fleeing the first monster machine they were headed towards a complete wall of giant machine monsters stretching from horizon to horizon as far as the eye could see, which began to stir at their approach.

Without any further hesitation Doc tore open a security panel on the dash and tapped a control he found there, causing a new dimension portal to open up before them, that he resolutely drove straight into.

A stream of smaller squid monsters followed them through before the portal shut.

OoOoO

The DeLorean reappeared on what was at least recognizable this time as a California road. Doc just pressed the gas pedal down harder, knowing they'd been followed once, and given how close those machine were, likely had been again.

True enough, seconds later the machines started issuing forth.

"So, what's up with that, Doc?" Xander shouted over the noise as they raced through traffic at about twice the posted speed limit, dodging other cars left and right as they did so. "I mean, I thought the slider device had to have time to recharge."

Doc jinked left as a squidie came down and plucked up a car right from where they would have been, and began to shred that vehicle. "Indeed it does. However, I realized the folly of jumping blindly into situations we knew nothing about without a means of easy exit, and installed a backup slider device, with its own charge independent of the first, meant as an emergency backup to take us to safety. However, I never got the chance to program it with safe coordinates after our onboard computers got scrambled by that EMP charge. So there's no way of telling what universe we are in."

Seeing something out of one of his side windows, Doc took a quick four lane changes in a single swerve and started heading down towards the beach. "Fortunately, now I know."

Xander looked ahead, face going white as he looked up, and up, and up. "Yeah. You ain't kidding. The two-hundred foot tall Happosai attacking the beaches of California alongside a giant, silly-looking ogre kinda tips you off, doesn't it?"

"Ranma One-Half?" Willow blinked. "Isn't that that series you and Jesse used to watch that my parents absolutely hated?"

Further conversation got cut off as Doc drove right between the giant Happosai's legs. The squidies following after, certain that whatever technology was in the small, fleeing vehicle (and which had been confirmed by other squidies via dissection was *not* in other, local automobiles) that allowed it to traverse dimensions would enable the machines of its own world to do the same and spread out over the mutiverse, ran instead into the giant cone of fire the perverted martial arts master exhaled, not even particularly noticing as he destroyed the machines from an alien world as part of his general rampage.

"I think we can confirm that's Happosai," Doc shouted over the noise the giant made during his rampage. His eyes on the various female beach-goers running to and fro trying to grab towels and things to preserve their modesty after their swimsuits had been stolen. "No other creature could steal that much underwear as an afterthought while still stomping on a major metropolitan area."

"Ack!" Willow shrieked as she looked down and noted the rather skimpy and barely decent catwoman costume she'd been wearing was now gone, and the *only* thing preserving her modesty was now the daily edition she'd wrapped around herself.

Xander became extremely interested in holding the package of paper-wrapped Willow in his arms, while at the same time trying hard not to appear so.

Automatically sensing that, Willow blushed, but calmed immediately, seeing Doc's attention was on driving and those outside had their views blocked by the newspaper, and the only person who could sense more was allowed to, in her opinion.

Xander's mind went on overdrive, as even without his hands in any inappropriate places he still became utterly fascinated by the sensations his fingers were returning.

In short order, Doc pulled over and glanced to see to the status of his passengers, to find Willow sitting there, beaming, and wearing Xander's shirt, the long T on her came down to make a respectable but daring covering of all her important parts. Of the news sheet there was no sign, her having discarded it out the window once it was no longer needed to cover her act of changing under it.

Xander was bare-chested and goofy, looking off into space with a happy expression.

"Are you two alright?" Doc asked, wondering what could have happened in those thirty seconds while his attention had been wholly on driving.

Xander shook himself clear of his goofiness over the glimpses he'd seen. "Yeah. Yeah, Doc. We're good."

Willow gave no reply, just sitting there looking smug.

"So, that was fun!" Xander declared, exiting the vehicle after a moment's pause. "Aaand, now that the chase is over, where to now, Doc? What universe are we going to next?"

"Go?" Doc rounded on him. "Where would we be going? We're in the Ranma 1/2 universe with a time machine! Have you no concept of the possibilities?"

The boy, put off, bounced from foot to foot as he thought about it. "I guess they did have some pretty interesting magic garbage lying around." Xander mused aloud.

"Magic, schmagic! Who cares about that?" Doc danced excitedly. "It probably wouldn't work away from this universe anyway. But even in an age of scientific wonders, the human body can still be the world's most dangerous machine, and the martial artists of this world are proof of it! Why, the worst martial artists from this series are stronger, faster and tougher than a Terminator. The best of them could have taken on Skynet alone, barehanded, and won. It wouldn't even be a contest!"

Xander crossed his arms, puzzled. "Ok, but... how are we gunna recruit them, Doc?"

"Recruit them?" Doc's grin was electric. "Why, my boy, we're going to do nothing of the kind! No, instead we are going to *become* martial artists of this world's standard!"

Staring up at the older man's demented grin, Xander felt butterflies in his stomach. "Uh, how are we going to do that, Doc? What? Did you bring along one of Doctor Stingray's mental recorder thingies?"

Doc shook his head. "No. Even with all the miniaturization she possessed, those devices require such computer power they each massed more than the DeLorean. So they are strictly stationary, and we had to leave them behind. No, my boy. We are going to do this the old fashioned way - by apprenticing ourselves to a master! That's the only way to acquire the necessary physical conditioning for those skills to be really useful anyway."

Xander screwed up his face, wondering if the Doc could be serious.

"Won't that take years?" Willow came up beside him to ask.

"Ten years, to be precise!" Doc declared. "So long as we're doing this, we might as well learn with the best! And that means a ten year long training mission."

"Whoa! Wait a minute, Doc!" Xander held up his hands in a blocking gesture. "Why would we do that? I mean, ten years is a long time. Plus, how are we gunna convince Ranma to teach us? How do we even know this stuff *works* in any universe but this one? Huh?"

"Unfortunately, we don't know that for certain," Doc admitted. "However, even the basic skills would be useful. Admit it: if not for a freak stroke of good fortune, we all would have died on that Terminator world. Then it nearly happened again on the Matrix one. And my homeworld and yours are both overrun with demons. We cannot continue to go through our journey without some sort of combat power - and you saw how easily we lost those laser rifles. No, martial arts is an excellent choice because it is something you can't lose easily, even if we crash or are robbed and have everything else lost. Besides, based upon my experience becoming a Terminator I have developed a theory that it is not so much that alien styles of magic *can't* work the same in other universes, but that it doesn't have any fuel, like a cell phone cut off from its power source can't get any signal."

Xander looked at him askance. "So, wouldn't that be the same for these martial arts?"

"Not even remotely!" Doc crowed, seizing both kids by the shoulders in his excitement. "You see the local martial artists obtain their superhuman performance by augmenting their abilities through the use of chi! And chi is generated internally by your own body!"

Willow sucked in her lower lip, biting on it before she drew together the necessary courage to object, "But I've played video games. I know wizards are supposed to store their own energy, too."

"Store, being the operative word there. A sponge can store water, but it does not generate it." Doc began pulling debris from Happosai's rampage off the DeLorean. "Most wizards, or at least ones of the styles I know, absorb their energy from their environment, in a steady trickle over time. But chi is something you produce yourself. Plus, I've read up on chi users in the Watcher archives, so know that it exists on our worlds. They just don't have the same degree of mastery over it back home! Chi use and production may even be a general rule common to all universes, much like electricity or chemistry, and not function like magic at all!"

Xander was back to being confused again. "So, if it's so great, why didn't you dress as someone who used it before?"

"I told you. I didn't have time to try everything." Doc flung the last of the debris off their DeLorean. "I only barely worked out that science was commonly useful before I ran out of fuel. Now, come on! We have to get ourselves to Japan!"

Seeing a great deal of Phys Ed in her future if she didn't do something about it, Willow was of a mind to be contrary. "But you said one reason to do this was because martial arts was something you couldn't lose easily, right?"

"Yes?" Doc grabbed a pair of sandals blown about in the wind of explosions and handed them to her.

She put them on. "But what about injuries? I know gymnasts have to give up the sport all of the time because they slip and break something, then can never practice again!"

Doc grinned. "You underestimate the martial artists of this universe, Rosenberg. In fact, I'd compare their ability to resist and recover from injuries favorably against a T-1000! More than once I've seen Ranma lose teeth, or be beaten nearly to death, and be fine in the next few seconds! Granted, that may be slightly exaggerated, but even so, their recovery is nothing short of phenomenal! Once you reach a certain level of ability, I don't think you have anything to fear from permanent disability if anything those comics recorded is accurate."

"But Doc!" Xander came to his best friend's defense. "What if this doesn't work? Ten years is an awful lot of time to just waste on something like this!"

Doc popped open the driver's door. "But that's just it! We wouldn't be wasting anything. Even if advanced chi manipulation doesn't work elsewhere, that only takes away the higher order powers. Being martial artists, even if we can't crush concrete with our blows or jump from rooftop to rooftop, is a talent that can be used anywhere! You could still get a vampire or Terminator in a joint-lock, even if you couldn't overpower him! And we could always come back here if we wanted to use one of the higher powers, like their miraculous healing!"

"Still, if there's no guarantee..." Willow pressed.

"Life has no guarantees, young Rosenberg," Doc shouted, climbing in to the driver's seat.

"Rosenberg? Rosenberg. Why do you keep calling me Rosenberg?" She questioned. "I mean, if you are a future Xander then you and I have been friends since forever."

Before she could start building a case for him NOT being a future Xander based on this evidence, Doc gave her his reasons. "I call you that because my Willow stopped being my friend almost since the day Buffy arrived in our lives. She preferred to be Buffy's minion! I didn't see it at first, and didn't stop trying to be her friend for many years, but my Willow did not take my side on any issue almost from the moment she met Buffy forward. She even helped push me out of the group several times on Buffy's suggestion, and nothing I could say mattered. So, no. I cannot consider such a person any type of friend."

He closed the door, cutting off further conversation on the subject, and leaving Willow with chills. Then, as she reviewed her own behavior, nearly in tears.

Xander was feeling pretty stunned the Doc would put it that way himself, but could admit that he'd already felt what were probably the seeds of that resentment, stemming from some behavior very similar to what he'd described cropping up a time or two.

Reading that in his face, Willow lunging towards Xander and began to cry onto his shoulder.

"I'm a BAD friend!"

Xander patted her shoulder awkwardly. "There, there, Willow. There, there."

OoOoO

With a time machine and thirty years of awareness of how technology had improved, it did not even take any particular genius on Doc Brown's part to secure their financial backing with just a few patents.

Soon they found themselves on a boat on their way to Japan. A plane would've been faster, but their car would have been going by boat either way, and Doc preferred to stay where he could keep an eye on it.

Besides, this way gave Xander and Willow time with some hastily bought instruction books and tapes on the Japanese language, so they wouldn't be quite so helpless or dependent on guides when they arrived.

Thanks to one costume or another, but most recently his thirty year possession by Sylia, Doc was already completely fluent in the language. He even spent substantial blocks of time tutoring the other two in it, at the same time reinforcing the knowledge in himself.

Of course, their study habits being what they were, this inevitably meant Willow would learn it faster than her Xander, try to help him, and when he'd had all he could tolerate of study and went to play some video games in the lounge, both Willow and their tutor would discover some free time.

"Say Doc?" She'd found the scientist on the deck.

"Yes, Miss Rosenberg?" He remained staring out to sea.

She winced. "We saw your Sunnydale, and it was a crater. When did that happen?"

He shrugged. "Oh, a couple of years after our high school graduation. Why?"

"I just," she stumbled over her words. "I've just been wondering about you."

He nodded. "I'm crazy. You know that, though. We all were, pretty much, in one way or another, toward the end there. Several years of more or less uninterrupted stress at that level can kill you, so going mad was sort of lucky, in a way. At least I am a functional crazy. Not like some others." He took a sip of hot cocoa.

Willow carefully noted that appeared to be Doc's comfort drink.

"So, where did you live? When... when it ended, I mean."

"Oh, all that took place in the headquarters we'd taken over from the Watcher's Council after finding out they were evil and destroying them all." He took another sip.

Willow almost found her hair standing up straight. "But Giles..."

"Is a rogue, a maverick, someone who did not fit in well with the organization, and did not follow their procedures at all, in most cases." Doc cut her off. "And, they noticed right about Buffy's eighteenth's birthday, so they threw him out."

"Oh," Willow said in a very small voice.

There came a silence of several minutes as they both contemplated their thoughts.

"Wasn't there anything happy, about our future?" She asked at last.

"For me? No, not particularly," Doc answered. "Moments, here or there. Mostly those came from watching what I'd thought at the time was the rest of you doing well. But most of that was missing the warning signs about what was to follow. You'd bounced from one romantic failure to another, more or less entirely unable to get a relationship that worked long term for one reason or another. But you may just have been following Buffy's example in that."

Tears were in her eyes, and she choked out. "How... how did we not last?"

Doc sighed, setting down his cup as he'd finished his cocoa long ago. "By never getting together. I never learned quite when or why you decided to broaden your horizons, but I suspect that it was Buffy's doing. You are a brilliant person, Rosenberg, several times as smart as Buffy, but you had a flaw in that you never did question anything Buffy told you. You just went out and did it. You may as well have had a hunchback and lisp and chanted 'Yes Master' to anything she said. I admit, I was slow to coming to realize you were a girl, and desirable. But in the end I suspect we never dated just because she was the one who gave you relationship advice, and so your romances turned out a lot like hers - as disasters. They weren't as epic as hers, of course. But you were the follower, not the leader, in her 'Thousand And One Tales Of How to Horribly Screw Up At Romance'."

Doc looked at Willow for the first time that conversation, and said, "The one time we even kissed, we'd both begun dating other people, and it didn't turn out well for any of us."

Doc left to get a refill on his cocoa, and perhaps find a more private place to think.

Willow would have rushed off in tears, except for one thing - he'd slipped, and called her desirable. That one word confirmed over a decade of girlish hopes concerning her Xander. And if this one could realize it, and come to prefer her to Buffy despite his bitterness and suffering, then hers could too.

Thinking back to the car, he may even have already.

But right now, she'd go off and give her Xander that first kiss - for luck, since they weren't dating anyone just now, so it shouldn't end up badly for anyone.

OoOoO

The door to the Cat Cafe slid open.

"Nihau!" Shampoo bounced over to their guests. "What you order?"

Doc smiled while Xander and Willow were goggling over actually seeing someone with purple hair. "Oh, we'll take whatever, so long as we can have a few words with Elder Cologne on the side."

"I don't get it, Doc," Xander declared as they slid into seats in one of the booths. "How is this going to get Ranma to train us?"

"We are not after Ranma," Doc answered, taking a napkin and unfolding it for tucking into his collar like a bib. "Because, no matter his personal skill, we have no evidence that he is any good as a teacher. There are only three proven martial arts teachers in this show, and none of us want Happosai. So that leaves either Genma or Cologne."

"If you're aware of that you know I'll only teach amazons," came a scratchy voice at their elbow. "Besides, only the most advanced students need the best teachers, and you three aren't even novices."

Willow jumped three inches in her chair and clutched her heart. Doc, having expected the real players on this world's field to be able to sneak up like that, just grinned. The only surprise was that she'd effortlessly joined a conversation they'd been having in English, and given that she was over three hundred years old, that wasn't much of a surprise, as you'd learn a few languages in that time, and England had invaded China more than once during that period. The old 'know your enemy' and all of that. But it was Xander who challenged, "That can't be right! If you only teach amazons, how come you gave lessons to Ranma?"

It was actually Doc who put an end to that line of inquiry. "Because he married into the tribe! I thought that was obvious. Ever since he married Shampoo, he's legally been an amazon - or at least, by the only laws that matter to the tribe in question. And since Ranma and his father were on their tribal lands when it happened, their laws applied! Even the UN would agree on that, and normally you couldn't get them to agree on the color of snow."

"But then what about Ryoga?" Xander turned to Doc to challenge. "She taught him that Breaking Point Thingy!"

Doc broke open a pair of chopsticks. "My guess is that wasn't strictly an Amazon technique. They must have at least a few obtained from outside sources, that they deliberately neglect to cover under their 'only an amazon' laws, so they can teach them in situations like that one."

Cologne narrowed her eyes at this stranger. "Yes. You are awfully well informed of our laws for an outsider." Privately, she thought that if Shampoo knew English she'd have been floating off the ground for weeks to hear total strangers assert that her marriage to Ranma was legal and binding.

It was. They just didn't hear a great deal of support for that from outsiders.

Willow snorted into her drink. "Well, where we come from you guys are a television show."

"Oh?" Cologne lofted both eyebrows, noting their 'Doc' hid his face in his hands.

"Yeah," Xander giggled. "We've got a time and dimension traveling machine."

"That's ENOUGH!" Doc brought both his fists down onto their table, stopped both giggling teens. "Have none of you ever heard of 'operational security'? Our success *depends* on certain parties being unaware of our capabilities!"

"Yeah, but Doc! Who's gunna believe us?" Xander pointed to the elder, then stopped, as the look on her face made it very plain that she was considering the possibility very carefully indeed. Only then did Xander seem to realize he'd screwed up. "Oh, um..."

"Don't bother lying now," Doc told him, stirring the noodles that Shampoo had just delivered to their booth. "Perhaps you forgot that with relics like the Naban Mirror, time travel isn't all that far fetched to an amazon. They know it's possible, and some of them have even done it before. I dare say, they've done things even we can't manage."

Xander and Willow just stared at the Amazon Elder, stricken looks on their faces.

"Of course," Doc went on, having tasted his first bite of noodles, "now that the secret is out, we can't possibly *use* the time machine. Because, just like every other special device in this series, the knowledge that we have it will become general in a matter of hours, and the number of people who could imagine their own uses for it is effectively limitless. So the moment we try to sneak off to where we hid it, we will be followed by the whole circus of them - then, when we get there, a fight will break out that will inevitably destroy it. Thank you, Xander, Rosenberg. I hope you like this universe. Because now we are stuck in it."

Xander kept working his mouth, trying to speak, but the horror over what he'd done wouldn't let anything out.

"But couldn't we get her to promise not to tell?" Willow blurted out.

Cologne was about to open her mouth to bargain, when Doc cut her off. "Wouldn't matter even if we did. Didn't you see the Kuno's ninja sneaking off after your declaration? Never mind that Nabiki is fluent in English and she is sitting in the booth right behind you." The two teens turned about in horror, and there she was, smirking in victory at their horrified faces.

Doc went on calmly. "No, just about every interested party will know in a matter of minutes. Even if we left now, there is no way that we could arrive before the whole party descends on us. You don't think we could overpower any of the natives, do you? Strangely, talking like rational adults never seems to work in this series, so that's what it would take. Certain people, like Happosai for sure, are of the attitude of just taking what they want, regardless. And the ensuring fight between them would either destroy the time machine, or it would wind up in the hands of probably the worst person for it. Could you imagine Ryoga with the ability to get lost through time and space? Or the paradoxes he could cause doing it?"

Xander looked ill, while Willow, who didn't know the character, just grieved over their earlier, careless outbursts.

OoOoO

Doc bought a house in the neighborhood, saying it only made sense, that they were going to be there for some time, so they might as well be comfortable. He also got heavily insured, although that cost almost as much as his house payment.

It paid for itself the next day, when Ryoga blew apart several walls in his pursuit of Ranma. Then the construction workers had everything put right by that evening.

It was truly amazing.

Then the three of them signed on as students of the Tendo dojo, who seemed to regard actually having paying students as one of the most amazing and unbelievable things to have happened to them so far, Amazons and magic artifacts and weird challengers and all.

Go figure.

On their first night in the new house, Willow tiptoed down the corridor to Xander's room, and her fingers had just touched the door panel when Doc's voice cut through the darkness, "If you are going to have sex, at least do yourselves the favor of getting married first."

There came a loud Thump inside Xander's room, and the boy's voice cried out in unbelief, "SEX?" While at the same time Willow squeaked out, "Marriage?" thinking of her family and big weddings and all those required things that weren't available right now.

Doc walked up out of the shadows as Xander stuck his head out of his room, not prepared for either nighttime visitor. Doc was calm and reasonable as he said, "You know we hope to eventually return to fighting demons and vampires and things, don't you?"

Somewhat lost by the non-sequitor, both teens nodded, wondering what he was getting at.

Doc just went on calmly to explain. "And you know a holy symbol like a cross or holy water to be one of the most effective tools in that business, don't you?"

Again, both teens nodded.

Doc stood there. "So, think about it. Holy energy is one of the most effective tools we have against supernatural terrors that would tear your guts out without that protection, and holy energy has rules. One of those rules is 'no sex before marriage'. Now we might not know the reasons that rule is in place, but marriage is a sacrament sacred to virtually all religions, so I think we're going to have to agree that it's important, right?"

More nods, a chagrined one this time from Willow.

Doc turned away, headed back toward his own room. "So don't go doing anything that would impair your ability to call on holy energy or Heavenly support. That extra bit you might throw away tonight could make the difference between a successful, long career, or a short, ugly one. Goodnight."

Doc went back to his room without even a backward glance.

Blushing and mortified, Willow returned to hers, too.

Xander was left feeling vague guilt and shame over something he hadn't done.

OoOoO

On electing not to enter themselves in the Japanese school system, and not having to get jobs for their support, the trio of would-be demon hunters had their days free, more or less, and it was Doc's suggestion they devote much of that to the study of martial arts.

Since that was their declared purpose in being there, no one voiced any objections.

As has been said, enrolling in the Tendo dojo was simple. It was a business with the sole purpose of teaching martial arts. The only hangup was how stunned all of the Tendos (and Saotomes) were over actually having any students.

Genma and Soun taught them during the day, in exchange for enough sake money to get blotto on that night. They weren't teaching any school or family secrets, but the dimension travelers hadn't expected them to anyway. For most of them, it was enough to get their basics in place, as it was the first formal self-defense instruction they'd ever had.

They also arranged for lessons in Japanese from two of Akane's friends. Nabiki had recommended a set of her own contacts, but Doc's rule (supported by Xander, based on knowledge drawn from the show) was simply: do not enter into any deal brokered by Nabiki - and it saved them substantial headaches even in the short time they'd been there.

Things went alright for a while. Luckily, Happosai found them boring. So, other than including Willow as a victim in some of his panty raids, left them alone - until they came up with a countermeasure even for that.

Of course, once you do that sort of thing, word spreads.

"So, how is it you seem to avoid our local pervert's 'loving attentions'?" A very rumpled and upset Nabiki asked one morning after they'd been there about two weeks, her clothing and hair askew and underwear missing after a rough groping, staring at the unmolested Willow as the trio arrived at the dojo for their training. "It's can't be a gaijin thing, as Happosai just molested a visiting Swedish swim team last week."

"Oh!" Willow bubbled happily. "Xander and Doc explained that the old guy only steals girls underwear, right?"

"That's right," Nabiki confirmed dryly, crossing her arms. "So how do you avoid it?"

"Simple." Willow bubbled. "I'm wearing Xander's underwear."

A cold breeze blew through the dojo at time seemed to freeze for that statement. Xander looked faintly uncomfortable.

"Come again?" Nabiki asked.

"He only likes sexy, female styled underwear, so I'm wearing Xander's boxers," Willow stated as calmly and clearly as you please.

"Indeed," Doc took over the explanation. "The panty raids on our house came to a stop when, lacking any underwear of her own for the second time, Rosenberg simply took to wearing Xander's full-time. Not being so fully endowed that it was uncomfortable to go bra-less, this worked out fine, and the thief soon no longer made any stops at our household."

Willow blushed scarlet at his mention of her bust size.

"That still doesn't explain why he didn't grope you." Nabiki scowled, feeling bruises in her tender parts, and more than a bit jealous this gaijin chick didn't have to put up with that.

"It's the same principle at work!" Doc exclaimed. "His boxers serve to insulate her from the groping attacks, throwing up interference that prevents the pervert from getting a clean draw of energy off her, even when glomped directly onto her chest. So he stopped trying. That is actually a very simple extension of an experiment Ranma conducted very early on."

"Come again?" Nabiki repeated, her eyebrow twitching, and now her whole family plus both Saotomes had gathered round in curiosity.

"Yeah, what 'experiment'?" Ranma wondered aloud.

Somehow Doc produced graphs and diagrams. "In one encounter very early on you set a trap where you conspired with the students at your school to fill the lockers of the female side of the locker room with undergarments from the male sports teams. Happosai stole them, tried to gain energy from them, and nearly died. His weakness made him helpless, and the ordinary school kids beat him without any difficulty, proving the theory."

"What theory?" Several voices, including Ranma's, repeated.

"That Happosai actually requires a regular supply of stolen female energy to survive!" Doc repeated, as though it should be obvious. "Furthermore, his passion for panty theft proves this charge can exist in clothing. By focusing on 'silky darlings', or in other words the most feminine attire possible, he is seeking to maximize the charge he gains! However, when Ranma pulled that switch on Happosai it proved that male energy is poisonous to him! All of these facts have been made clear in any number of instances."

"Yeah? So what?" Ranma scratched his head, not the only one confused.

"So, if a man's underwear can kill him, a girl wearing that is more resistant to his attacks!" Doc repeated, as if it should be obvious, pointing to where two lines on his graph intersected. "In theory it's very simple. The female charge he is seeking when he goes for a grope is reduced or even canceled by the male charge of the undergarments she is wearing!"

Doc scribbled several diagrams on the board before he turned around again to testify to the group. "The moment we discovered the principle worked, Rosenberg went shopping and bought Xander all new clothes, selecting a wardrobe that she could wear equally well! Now everything she wears comes out of his closet. She wears his shirts, his pants, undershirts, underwear and socks, even his T-shirts when she goes to bed. Our pattern is for Xander's clothing to get worn by him, washed, then worn by Willow and washed before once more getting worn by him, this appears to keep there from being any build-up of the energy Happosai desires, while at the same time maintaining enough male charge to drive him off!"

Kasumi spoke up from the back, "But if that's so, how is it that grandfather Happosai can still grope Ranma?"

Doc, sighing, shook his head, matching eyes with the boy in question. "Ranma, I'm sorry. But according to my best information, your curse causes you to spend roughly equal time female as you do male. In that case, I would imagine your chi does not leave much of a charge in either direction. So your clothes would remain neutrally charged, and not provide any special protection."

Doc stepped away from the graph, saying, "This is all very basic demon hunting: Find what the creature's weaknesses are, then exploit them for all they are worth. And so far Willow has gone unmolested!"

Soun Tendo's daughters looked at each other.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Yes, they can't help but meddle, and meddling in the affairs of the Ranma universe, even going for simple defensive measures against perversion, then explaining those methods to others, just happens to directly get in the way of the goals of one of the most powerful (if contemptible) martial artists in that universe.

And no, after a mere couple of week the trio have no martial arts skill to speak of. 


	5. Chapter 5

Eighty Eight Miles Per Hour  
Chapter Five

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Lionheart  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

"So, Nabiki." Doc stood there, looking at the readouts on his calculator. "By my figures, that information is worth about a hundred million yen. Pay up." He held out his hand, palm up.

"Yeah, right," Nabiki scoffed, dismissing him with a wave. "Next time get it in writing and have your mark pay you in advance."

"Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say," he remarked. And, as she ran past him to hurry off to school where she could begin marketing the information she'd just refused to pay for, he drew his tranq pistol and shot her in the butt.

OoOoO

Nabiki shook herself where she had fallen. But her greed drove any grogginess from her mind, and she pulled herself to her feet, hurrying off to school. In her singleness of drive she failed to notice the added posters that were hanging around, or that Nerima seemed to have become unisex, as just about every woman she passed was wearing pants and a man's shirt.

No, nothing would deter her from her mission, and she arrived to Furinkan, where every girl student seemed to be wearing pants under her school uniform skirt, and their shirts bore an awful lot of resemblance to the male issue uniform one.

Meeting her factors, all of whom had modified uniforms, Nabiki blurted, "Have I got a scoop. This is going to be the best pay data this year."

That was when her senses finally tuned in to what was going on around her. From every radio came announcements, on the screens of a couple of portable television sets, was the voice and (where possible) the face of Doctor Brown explaining his underwear theory. She was surrounded by posters containing his graphs, and just then she got passed by one of the class representatives passing out handouts describing the theory.

Just then one of the factors cocked her head. "By the way, Nabiki. Why did you miss school yesterday?"

"I didn't..." Nabiki began, then caught sight of a school calender with days marked off to the next festival, and sure enough, she'd missed a day.

Then suddenly she was bowled over by an excited pervert pawing her bits. "HOTCHA! Here's one that still appreciates a delicate womanly figure. COME TO PAPA!"

OoOoO

"Oh, there you are, Nabiki," Kasumi said to the filthy and rumpled girl who looked like she'd been subjected to an entire district's worth of gropes all on her lonesome. "Did you enjoy school today? I was a little hesitant to let Doc put you out on the street this morning where you'd fallen down yesterday. But things seem to have turned out alright. Would you like some tea?"

"I'll be in my room," Nabiki growled.

OoOoO

She came down a while later, after having made some calls, to find Doc Brown talking with her dad around the dining table.

She came to a complete stop when she noticed the new posters around the walls, one proclaiming, "Soun Tendo, Student of the Pervert!" another "Tendo Dojo, Sheltering the Panty Thief!" and like messages repeated all around the walls.

"So you see," Doc commented over a mug of hot cocoa to a trembling Soun, "Unless you call off your daughter I'll have no choice but to distribute these, and make it a regular part of my daily message broadcasts just who and why is giving that pervert aid. At minimum, you should be fined for part of the monetary loss caused by his depredations. And as you can see," he flicked a stack of papers to the Tendo patriarch, "the very lowest estimate means you lose the house, the dojo, and all you own. More likely, you go to jail."

Soun Tendo burst into tears and ranting, which Doc ignored, turning to face Nabiki from where he was seated. He flung her a tape. "And that, Miss Tendo, is a recording of the telephone calls you've just made. Only one recording out of several, so feel free to destroy that copy. It won't help. On there are orders you have given to your network, at least three of which are crimes, and eleven more are actionable under lawsuit. Should you actually go through with any of your plans, the detectives I have hired should have no trouble accumulating enough evidence to see you and your entire network behind bars."

Nabiki caught the tape, and fingered it. Her eyes went flat. "You wouldn't dare."

"Oh, I think you have no idea just exactly what I am capable of." Doc stood up and walked over to face her, stopping just a foot away. "I stood closer than this to my best friend in all the world, a boy I had known all of my life starting from kindergarten together, my brother in all but blood, a person who had never done anything I wouldn't have done myself. And I rammed a weapon through his heart and hugged him to my chest as I watched him die."

Nabiki considered herself an expert at reading people - he wasn't lying.

She peed herself.

"You're lucky, Miss Tendo." He dismissed her, walking away unconcerned. "Usually, when someone clearly identifies themselves as a threat, I just kill them. You are receiving the unusual courtesy of a warning."

Nabiki hurried upstairs to call off the orders she had just given, rushing so fast she tripped on the third step up.

"Oh, and Miss Tendo," Doc called after her. "From now on you will compile a journal of all of Ranma's adventures, including what, who and most importantly when."

Nabiki paused halfway up the steps, panting for breath as she tried to calm her panic. "Um, sure. That'll be..."

Doc looked from the posters on the walls to her, and took a step forward. "Do I have to tell you again?"

Fervent in her desire not to be homeless, she shook her head frantically, then hurried upstairs to make those calls before her underlings did anything that could get them all in trouble. Lawsuits and a PR war wasn't something she could get Ranma to save her from.

OoOoO

Xander and Willow met Doc outside the dojo, wide-eyed.

"We didn't need that fight, Doc," Xander reproved. "We could have just let her sell the info."

"On the contrary, an altercation was inevitable at some point." Doc gave them all a big grin. "Nabiki is one of the few around here who actively seek to stir up conflict, so that she can profit by it. And she does not spare the innocent. That she would find some way to involve us in a scheme we couldn't just say 'no' to was not in question. So we needed the conflict to occur on our terms, without any distractions we might deem more important to handle at the time, and set an unfortunate precedent by going along with any part or portion of her deal."

Doc shrugged, grinning even wider. "By planning and executing the conflict ourselves, we were able to adjust everything for maximum impact. She doesn't need to know that Jesse was a vampire at the time I killed him, or that my weapon was a stake. Likewise, I did not feel compelled to share that the things I clearly identify as threats are human-killing monsters the world is better off without. It just sounds more dire to eliminate that data."

Willow and Xander went white. "Yeah Doc," Xander swallowed, now petrified in fear. "I think you forgot one thing."

"What's that?" Doc was still gleeful over his defeat of the Tendo mercenary.

"Him." Xander pointed over his shoulder.

Doc turned about to see Happosai squatting on the wall behind him, burning in anger. "You!" the pervert raged, his aura growing higher. "You're the one that has robbed me of all those pretty ladies! You're the one who told them not to wear silky darlings!"

Doc fainted in fear.

It didn't help him.

OoOoO

The moaning, purple ruins that were dumped by the entrance of the Tendo dojo two weeks later were scarcely even recognizable as two teens and one doctor.

"Bah!" Happosai declared, coming to light on the lawn. "These three aren't even any fun to play with! You two!" Happosai pointed a finger at the trembling Genma and Soun. "Get these three up to speed. Everyone around here is going unisex, so I'm going to go on a training journey, and if these three can't handle it, I'll take you two instead!"

"AHHHH!" Soun's long hair stood straight up in terror. Instantly the two men were kneeling before the ancient lecher. "Yes, master!" "Of course, master!"

"AKANE!" The little pervert went leaping off. "Comfort an old man in your bosom!"

OoOoO

Unfortunately for them, the trio were healed by the next morning, that universe having some excellent success with medicine so long as you knew the right doctors to go to. And they woke up in their hospital beds to Genma and Soun heaving them out the windows.

What followed then were two of the most stressful weeks any of the dimension travelers had ever had. At its best, they were being relentlessly drilled in how to stand, punch, kick and move at an intensity that would make slave drivers blush in shame. At worst, well, they never got to sleep in their house any more, as they spent every night and evening in the hospital recovering from the injuries they acquired during sparring.

The trio were too exhausted to even notice the looks of pity they were getting from those in the Tendo household who were *not* regularly beating them up during training. And the scary part was, everyone there knew this was just the warmup to what Happosai was off preparing to do to them later.

"Alright! That's enough! Knock it off!" Ranma at last rose to their defense, kicking the ladle out of the hands of Soun, who'd been holding it an inch too far for the weeping Willow to reach, in an effort to encourage her to get her battered body moving just that much farther. Flipping the ladle three times in the air without spilling a drop, Ranma caught it in one hand and gave it to the girl, who began to drink with pathetic gratitude. With one foot he shoved the bucket of drinking water towards the two mangled and desperate boys, who also began to slack their thirst.

"It does seem a little... unpleasant," Kasumi ventured the worst denunciation of behavior she had ever pronounced in anyone's memory. However, the girl wearing Dr. Tofu's shirt felt some strong gratitude for the favor those three had done their world.

Nabiki, wearing Kuno's kendo garb, ventured no comment. The number of couples in Nerima had skyrocketed, as girls without age-similar male siblings had sought out someone to form a relationship with so they could share clothes. Entire lines of unisex garments were becoming the single biggest fashion sensation - and she hadn't made a yen on any of it.

Akane just grumbled where she was pumping weights wearing her father's gi, resentful and almost jealous these near-strangers were being trained so hard by *HER* dad! Why didn't she get any training? She was a martial artist too!

Of course, her dad wouldn't dare treat her that roughly, but that went without saying.

"But son!" Soun begged Ranma on his knees. "You don't understand! We're just trying to get them ready for the Master when he returns!"

"Yes, boy." Genma adjusted his glasses before growling. "You don't have any idea the kind of prolonged torture a training trip with the Master involves. Why, taking someone on as a student is the worst thing the Master knows how to do to them! And if he doesn't take these three on this journey, he's going to take us!"

"That's why it's going to be THEM!" Genma shouted in his son's face.

"Give me one day off," Doc groaned from the pile of bruises he formed on the floor, "And there won't be any training trip. Not for me, not you, not anyone."

Genma stomped near the other's swollen face, holding his fists clenched to his sides as he shouted to the puddle the other man formed. "Oh yeah? Why should we believe YOU?"

"Because I know the strategy you used to get rid of him the first time," Doc wheezed from where he was becoming one with the floor. "And I've got enough money to buy the sake and dynamite you need to do it to him again. How's another ten years with him stuck in a cave sound to you?"

Genma and Soun looked at each other, and time seemed to hold still.

OoOoO

The send-off celebration was in full swing when Happosai arrived, with the three students he was intending to take dressed up in new gis, with brand new packs full of camping gear on their backs, just kneeling and waiting for his instructions.

The sight actually put the old man in a better mood. Obedience was something he liked. Of course, that wouldn't help them much, but it was flattering. His resolve to test them, though, faltered when he caught sight of all of the food that Kasumi had prepared.

The banquet got demolished in about three minutes flat, with a pyramid of alcohol kegs that reached all the way to the ceiling getting demolished soon after. Enough booze to kill a barracks full of hard drinking army officers, and it didn't even make him woozy.

Genma and Soun shared concerned glances with each other.

Then Nabiki pulled on a cord, and a cover lifted off the prime offering: a mound higher than Happosai was tall composed entirely of lacy, silk, lady's undergarments.

"SWEETO!"

Happosai, who had felt deprived of such things in the amounts he desired, did a belly flop into the pile and began to rub them over all parts of his body, only to seconds later turn green, then purple, looking clearly ill.

Then his eyes rolled up and he collapsed backwards, unconscious.

Doc got up and walked over. "In that food were ninety-five different poisons, each of which had sufficient dosage to kill a dozen men. The booze you drank wasn't sake, but isopropyl alcohol - wood alcohol, in other words, another form of poison that blinds when it doesn't kill. Furthermore, while those undergarments were originally manufactured and marketed for a female consumer base, those particular used panties and bras were only ever owned and used by male crossdressers and transvestites."

Doc took a very tired and strained breath. Genma and Soun had barely slacked on their training, even after this trap had been set, and he still had fresh bruises all over his body as he ranted to the fallen Happosai. "You have consumed your own body weight in poison, even without accounting for all that rubbing alcohol. I don't doubt," he told the little man that Genma and Soun were now vigorously stomping on, "That with your chi energy you could easily enough have burned off even that amount. But with your chi itself poisoned and drained, I don't believe you have that option available."

Doc then reached down with a knife to slit the old pervert's throat...

...only to find his hand caught in Ranma's iron grasp. "Nuh uh," Ranma shook his head. "Go stick him in a cave, if you want. I ain't got no problem with that. But I ain't gunna let anyone kill the old freak, anymore than I let those two jerks run you completely into the ground."

Doc spent a moment staring at the young hero, before he withdrew the knife and declared, "Fair enough. And when we stick him back in his cave, we won't use any more dynamite than he survived the first time Genma and Soun stuck him there."

In the background, Nabiki's hair had toinged out in all directions on seeing Doc go for the old man's throat, and she internally marked that 'will kill when motivated to' box on her internal profile of Doc to 'confirmed'.

Well, that took him and his allies permanently off her target list.

OoOoO

BOOM!

"You weren't supposed to hire a proctologist to stuff all that dynamite into his colon," Ranma groused.

"That was never part of our agreement." Doc announced. "Only that I wouldn't use any more than your parents did on him before. Look, he's survived it anyway."

They then watched as Happosai's two students eagerly sealed the old man in a cave using plenty of spirit wards.

OoOoO

After Happosai life returned to what passed for normal at the Tendo dojo. The trio of paying students decided they needed a break after a month that made army basic training look like a relaxing day lounging around in front of the television set, so they took the weekend off and went to see some of the sights of Japan.

It was no accident that the entire Wrecking Crew followed them, some overtly, some sneakily, as no one had forgotten they were supposed to have a time machine stashed somewhere.

But the vacationers never went close to it, as their focus really was on having fun. And that trip turned out so pleasant (aside from Ranma getting into any number of fights) that they decided to take every weekend off, doing much the same thing.

It turned out to be a valuable stress relief for all of them, as the two fathers still rode their trio of students hard in training, for fear of the Master somehow returning and needing them prepared as proper scapegoats. But they did not work them nearly so hard as before.

However, the cascade of adventures for Ranma just never seemed to end.

"This just never lets up, does it?" Willow asked, after watching Ranma go through the torture of being introduced to an impostor passing himself off to his mother as her son, when Ranma himself could only see the woman in his cursed form.

Her fellow Sunnydaler shook his head. "Yeah. This stuff seems to go on every day."

Doc tsked. "Remember, Xander. The Ranma 1/2 manga was over four hundred chapters long. Each chapter was often its own adventure, although some spanned two or three, rarely more. In an interview, the author revealed that the manga spanned approximately one year of time. Since a year has 365 days, and there are more than four hundred chapters, that means on average he encountered slightly more than one adventure a day. A truly frantic pace. So we should not be surprised by his life being hectic. I had more peace on a demon-haunted Earth. So one might quite literally say his life is worse than Hell."

Nabiki pulled a sucker out of her mouth. "You really believe that we are a manga, don't you? I mean, I know you said something about that when you showed up, but that was over a month ago now, and you still haven't stopped talking like it was true."

Akane huffed. "Forget it, Nabiki! They also talk like they are real demon hunters, when you saw how pathetic they were at martial arts when they came here!"

Xander and Doc both shared a smirk with each other, knowing that Akane's upset came from the jealousy that was rearing up and she was struggling hard not to admit to, as by now the trio of demon hunters each had a sizable fraction of her skill. A fraction, like, a quarter or less as good as she was, but it was clear that if they kept improving at this rate, they would soon surpass her, as her skills hadn't improved noticeably at all during that period. And the idea that these know-nothings could soon equal her was plainly irritating the youngest daughter.

Not that Akane would have ever put up with the training they were going through. Thanks to Happosai's assertions that he wanted them fun to play with, Genma and Soun were still pushing them hard, and the trio left every day covered with bruises, whereas Akane's idea of training was jogging or lifting weights. Anybody who'd actually spar with her was taking their life in their hands as she'd almost immediately lose her temper and lash out with all she had - and this was especially true if her sparring opponent dared to actually hit her.

Willow had suffered a night in the hospital because of that. Now, if none of them wanted to train with Akane, that was her own fault.

But she really, Really, REALLY didn't like being left behind, either.

Nabiki left and Akane stormed out after her sister, still in a huff. The trio just went through their normal routines, knowing that the household would be finished with breakfast soon, and the two fathers would be coming in to resume their training shortly after.

OoOoO

"RANMA!" Ryoga burst into the dojo. "Thanks to you, I've seen Hell!"

Doc looked up from where he'd been cleaning up the mess of broken bricks Akane had left behind - the Anything Goes school being big on drafting students as unpaid labor. "That's funny. I didn't see you there."

That was enough of a non-sequitor to stop Ryoga's attacking lunge towards Ranma, who was already braced for it. However, both boys stopped fighting with a surprised, "Huh?"

Doc stood up smiling, and offering to shake the Lost Boy's hand. "That's right. I haven't introduced myself to you yet, have I? I am Doctor Emmett Brown. My world got turned into a Hell, and I escaped in a dimension-spanning device of my own invention. Now I scour the universe seeking for some way to save my homeworld and the surviving humans there from extinction. How are you?"

Before Ryoga could answer, Doc had wrapped his arms around the stunned Lost Boy's shoulders and confided in him. "Oh, and by the way, there are worse things you could turn into than a cute little pig. Why, all my best friends became demons. I watched one rip apart the mentor she had loved and admired for years and gobble up the bloody bits as a snack while he was still screaming. Although he was a demon at the time, too, so it really was par for the course. You see a lot of that kind of thing on a Hellworld. So, care to tell me what your experience was like? What color was the ground? What level was the heat like? You never really get used to the smell of a Hellworld, do you?"

Ryoga was sweating as the demented man confided in him. "Uh, I gotta go."

Soon after he'd left Xander sidled up to the Doc and whispered, "What did you do?"

"Tagged him with a tracer," Doc whispered back.

"What?" Xander choked, surprised the Doc would do that.

"Don't be surprised, I've done this every time he's visited," Doc shrugged.

"Why?" Willow joined this whispered conversation.

"So I can track where he goes. Why do you think they do it to migratory animals?" Doc answered as he returned to his cleaning duties.

Willow and Xander now joined forces against him, standing shoulder to shoulder to ask, "Why would tracking Ryoga be important?"

"Do you mean besides an exercise in chaos theory?" Doc grinned back.

The two teens nodded, and seeing their instructors were not there yet, Doc confided, "In volume 33 of the manga, Ranma plucks ripe persimmons from off a tree. Unfortunately, persimmons can spend from early summer clear through until March ripening on the tree, so that gives us virtually no warning. And it wasn't in a professional orchard, so normal harvest schedules are no help to us in planning the timing, as the fruit are ripe right now. So it could be today, or it could be several months from now that Ranma plucks those particular fruit."

"Why should that be important?" Both teens asked in unison.

Doc bent close and whispered softly, "Because, in that same volume Ryoga encounters magical Aging Mushrooms he'd plucked from the Forest of Time, that can set a person's age from that of a child to a very old man depending on how large the mushroom is, with each centimeter of growth representing one year of age."

"Wait a second, Doc. How do you remember all this stuff?" Xander interrupted.

Doc smiling benignly, if in a somewhat demented way, at the boy, and told him in a normal tone of voice, "What most people fail to realize is that the memory can be and should be trained. It is like a muscle, in that it can atrophy with disuse, be destroyed by dangerous practices, or built up to become more powerful with the proper exercises. And one of the worst things you can do for yourself is to fill your memory with phrases like 'I forgot', or 'I don't remember', blaming your memory when in truth you never noticed in the first place. Telling yourself to remember that you have a bad memory is one of the worst things you could do for your ability to recall data."

Xander shook his head. "Yeah, but Doc, I don't..."

"Don't say it!" Doc cut him off. "Remember, I was you. I fell into that trap, too, of telling myself I 'wasn't this' or 'couldn't that'. And you know what? So long as I told myself I was incapable, I was! Then, when I had to change my mind about my ability to do things, I found that I was far more capable than I'd ever realized. One mistake doesn't mean that you are incapable of something! Or that you'll never be any good at it. Just because something looks hard, doesn't mean that you can't do it! You don't have to leap out of the womb expert at something in order to be brilliant at it! Einstein got flunked out of math class!"

Xander shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable, and Doc took him by the shoulders kindly. "Xander, I've been there. I know how uncomfortable it can be to try at something when you don't think you're any good at it. But the truth is, everything can and will be hard until you get some experience at it. You just have to keep trying. I know you haven't had any of the support for your self esteem a young man deserves, but you've just got to get past that. People believe in you. I know the goofball image is safe, that failure is expected of a goof, so when you fail, and laugh, it feels like no one notices, but you've got to put that behind you and grow into someone more capable. You must succeed, because if you don't, who else will? You've got a world to save, my boy, and not Buffy, nor Willow, nor Giles nor anyone else succeeds at that most critical thing when it comes right down to the end."

Xander gave a lame grin. "I think you'll do fine at it, Doc."

Doc's grin was electric, and he slapped the youth on both shoulders as he released him. "There! That wasn't so hard, was it? Since I am you, if you can believe in me, then believe in yourself, too! Now, as to your original question, why did I train my memory? Think of the life I've had to live. Dodging demons in a Hell dimension isn't a comfortable lifestyle. Not unlike that Terminator world, everything is in short supply. You can't stop in for a casual snack at a fast food place, pick up whatever you want at the store, or use any other of the conveniences we've become used to, like a library when you need to research something. In that sort of situation, if you can't keep info in your head, you often don't get to have it at all. I memorized every science text I could get a hold of, and quite a few other things as well. It took quite a bit of work to build the DeLorean, and I didn't have many reference manuals."

~So, the time machine is built into a DeLorean,~ Nabiki thought where she'd listened to the feeds from the microphones in the dojo. Right after that lovely bit of material, her father and his friend arrived to start the daily lessons, so she wouldn't be hearing anything more that day, put her equipment back into hiding, then rushed off to school.

About the only exception she'd consider to her 'Don't run scams on Doc or his friends' rule was that time machine. Because once she had it, retribution would be impossible, as she'd vanish into the time stream.

Her list of investments and bets to be made once she could travel to the past kept growing longer and longer.

OoOoO

"And Nabiki thinks she's pulling the wool over our eyes, or that I don't know what's going on," Doc whispered to himself as he entered the Tendo kitchen.

"Oh, hello Doc," Kasumi greeted him warmly. "Lunch will be ready in a few minutes."

"Thank you, Kasumi," Doc replied warmly. "I'll gladly help carry it out, of course. But I was wondering, you know the rumors that we have a time machine. Could you tell me how and when your mother died?"

She stopped what she was doing, just blinking at him.

"Because you see, I'd like to prevent it," he concluded warmly.

OoOoO

"Sasuke, are you there?" Doc called out softly into the space under the Tendo home's floorboards.

"I'm really not supposed to reveal myself like this," the rat-like ninja confessed.

"I won't tell anyone if you don't," Doc promised. "I was just wondering, you know how rumors have it that I possess a time machine. Could you tell me what happened to Kodachi's mother? Or where you feel the Kuno family might have gone wrong? Because if it is something that can be prevented, I'd like to look into sparing them their current insanity."

OoOoO

"So, Ukyo," Doc asked as he was eating a breakfast okonomiyaki at her restaurant. "I never heard what happened to your parents. Are they still alive?"

OoOoO

"Wait, don't tell me, let me guess. You'd like to know what happened to Shampoo's mother," Cologne's voice scratched out.

"I see word of my activities has been getting around before me," Doc took a seat in her restaurant, only to be presented with a roll of parchment.

"That's a list I've compiled of major events that went badly for me and my family, including dates, locations, and where possible details. Now I warn you, there are countermeasures it's possible to use against time travelers," the crone warned. "So if you use this information against me or my family, you'll regret it."

Doc smiled warmly. "My dear elder, nothing could be further from my mind. In all honesty, knowing this whole cast of characters, if I had to trust my life to one person, it would be you."

"Not Ranma?" she growled with some surprise.

"He's too easily tricked. I'd consider you safer," Doc answered calmly.

OoOoO

"So, Mrs Saotome, if there was one mistake in your life you could undo, what would it be?" Doc asked conversationally as, as a student of the dojo, he was tapped for escorting her safely home after her visit one evening.

"Marrying Genma," the woman answered with uncustomary candor, having heard the rumors about this man's apparent quest to change the past, speaking softly but with deep felt bitterness, accumulated over years of complete abandonment by the man she had once trusted, as she admitted, "I love my son, but my husband is worthless."

In fact, it hadn't taken much on her part to arrange this escort home, so she could have this very conversation with the man who claimed he could be altering time.

"Well, considering your son looks almost exactly like a male version of you," ~when he isn't a girl, when he looks even *more* like you~ Doc thought to himself, "I'd venture a guess that if you and Genma never got together, and Heaven had to pick which one of you had Ranma, it would be you," Doc stated confidently. "So, how did you and the old ball of grease get together, anyway?"

Nodoka thought back to the notes she'd carefully compiled at home plotting out the events that led up to the worst mistake of her life, and began to reveal in detail how she'd made the choice to marry Genma, and how things might have gone differently.

OoOoO

"So," Doc sat himself back down at a booth in the Cat Cafe, the Amazon Elder seated opposite him, spreading the sheets of data he'd accumulated between them. "You strike me as one of the very few, if not the only, rational adults in the whole series. These are the character histories I've worked up on the major players in your son-in-law's life, along with the changes they'd like to be made. Perhaps you'd like to offer your insight, and make some suggestions, because I don't know how I am going to accomplish some of these."

OoOoO

The hood and front axle of the DeLorean crumpled under the force of a bonbori wielded by Shampoo, who was driving Kodachi out of the driver's seat, through the shattered windshield, to face her.

Moments later Pantyhose Taru picked the time vehicle up and threw it at Ranma, only for Mousse to catch hold of it with chains mid-air and try to board. But Genma and Soun beat him to it, splashing the duck-boy and climbing up his chains while the vehicle was still in flight and trying to activate the time circuits, totally ignorant of how the device should be operated.

They were less than happy when they couldn't get it to activate, and the vehicle crashed down where Ranma had been.

The circus continued in this vein until someone else tried to hit Ryoga with the by now very beat up car and the Lost Boy, so focused on defeating Ranma that he saw it only as just another obstacle, blew the time vehicle into powder with a Breaking Point.

The fight seemed to stop as everyone froze in horror over the destruction of the vehicle they were all there fighting over. Then it started right back up again as each side blamed the others and they went right back to brawling over whose fault it was.

Xander and Willow looked on in tears, while Doc just methodically ripped up the documents he had prepared of everybody's plans of what they'd like changed in their pasts.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

It was inevitable at some point. We all know that.

Point is, Doc knew that too. 


	6. Chapter 6

Eighty Eight Miles Per Hour  
Chapter Six

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Lionheart  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

"HIYAH!"

A shard of rubble bounced across the dojo floor from the shattered bricks, although this time it was Willow who stood up and wiped the sweat from off her brow. "Wow. That felt pretty good." She looked across to Xander and Doc, who'd also pulverized their own stacks of bricks, and they all beamed at each other.

"I can hardly believe we've been here four months already," Doc shook his head.

"I can hardly believe how *good* we've gotten," Xander made some test punches in the air. "I could probably wipe the floor with Angel, now."

Doc snorted. "Good is a relative thing, Xander. I have no doubts you could wipe the floor with most things from your homeworld. But locally, we suck."

"We've got to appear *somewhere* on the pecking order, right?" Xander protested.

"Oh, absolutely." Doc smiled. "Why, I just heard last night Genma confide to Soun that we were on the verge of surpassing his daughter - by which he means the only daughter practicing martial arts, or in other words, Akane. And he took the opportunity to chide Soun, and encourage him to increase Akane's training. But her father made all the usual excuses."

"So we're as good as Akane?" Both Xander and Willow perked up at that news.

Doc shrugged. "It's possible. 'On the verge of' is another way of saying, 'hasn't yet, but will soon if things continue as they are'. So we have to be roughly in her ball park."

Xander clapped his hands and rubbed them to free them of brick dust. "So, as good as Akane. That's great! Where does that put us in relation to everyone else?"

Doc smirked at his enthusiasm, but produced graphs with pictures. "In our local environment, the A-List martial artists include Happosai and Cologne, some of the major menaces like Pantyhose, Herb and Saffron, or Ranma when he is fighting at his most serious. The B and C List players are more fluid, often changing places in those fields, and includes virtually all of the major fiancees and rivals. Ranma and Shampoo are B-List most of the time, although early on in the show Ranma started at C, and later slips that low when he isn't taking things seriously. Mousse is almost always C, while Ryoga is regularly a very high B. On the next level down D-List is reserved for annoyances rather than threats, and would include Genma and Soun, as well as most other players who don't see a lot of action other than to get shoved about. All three Kunos fall to that list most of the time. And below them all we have Akane on the E-List, where we have only just now qualified to join her. Although, Akane is a special case, as she was clearly an author's favorite, and has the special ability when she loses her temper of making a single hit at B-List level. She just can't maintain it or defend herself at that level, so only really uses it on opponents she doesn't have to defend against - like Ranma, who never once hits her, or those who don't dare hit her for risk of offending him. And obviously, we don't share that ability of hers. So congratulations! After all that hard work and effort, we now qualify as the worst martial artists in Nerima!"

Doc was grinning as he announced this, however. "But at least it's some consolation that, in a one on one fight, any one of the three of us would be a good match against a Terminator."

"That's it?" Willow protested. "It can't be that simple! Genma spars with Ranma all the time, and they are about equal to each other, most mornings anyway."

"Oh, it's loaded with special cases," Doc reassured. "You bring up a good one. Because of his experience training Ranma, Genma has obtained detailed and intimate knowledge of his son's abilities, and he placed special emphasis on knowing his son's weak points, buttons to press, and so on. So when facing Ranma alone, Genma fights at a full level higher than normal. Also, he has made a careful study of just where and how to catch his son off-guard, taking it easy or slacking, and so at his worst. So most often in those early morning sparring matches it is C vs C, or roughly equal on both sides. Team ups are another way to switch the balance, to where multiple lower-grade martial artists can sometimes challenge a higher one. Genma and Soun can regularly achieve a C working together. Fighting on a specially prepared battlefield is another way some players give themselves as much as a full grade of advantage, although that doesn't always work. But it is a favorite of Principal Kuno, and various one-time opponents. Not all of this works all of the time, and it is especially risky and dangerous to try against A-List opponents, but it does happen."

"So the three of us together..." Willow mused.

"Could easily enough beat up Akane, true. Even when the whole accumulated sports teams of Furinkan High couldn't. She beat you up once and you'd like to return the favor. That's very in-genre," Doc agreed. "The way the fight would probably go, she'd lose her temper and take down one of us with her one-shot attack, but with the benefit of a team-up of two martial artists on her level the other two could finish defeating her fairly easily after that. But I wouldn't go looking for revenge for the time she hospitalized you just yet, as anyone who attacks Akane also has to face Ranma."

"Oh, pooh." Willow pouted.

OoOoO

"I wish we could have gone to Toma's island, too," Willow sighed wistfully, walking along the sands. "A normal beach just isn't the same."

Kuno's boat had just departed that morning, and everyone who was anyone in Nerima had piled aboard, using just about every excuse imaginable. But there hadn't really been room for all the people who'd already crowded on. No space was left for three students whose only connection to the main action was they paid for martial arts lessons.

Those going on the trip didn't know the adventure that lay in store for them, but Doc knew, and he'd told his two companions once the boat had already departed.

Xander chucked a stone into the water, evidencing some frustration. "All we could have been was target practice for the real players fighting there."

The boy was plainly taking it hard that, after all that hard work and effort, they weren't at least a level or two higher on the local playing field. Being in a state where he could be casually swatted about by people lowly enough to themselves be counted mere annoyances to the real cast was putting the boy mentally right where he'd been back in Sunnydale.

And Xander didn't want to be the doughnut gopher anymore.

Doc smirked, knowing the boy would be astonished at just how much work went into being at the kind of level Ranma and the other major players were. Also, that Xander would be astounded at just how good he really was, something that would become clear once they got out of this universe to somewhere the prominent natives weren't insanely dangerous and skilled martial arts masters.

"Doc," Xander rounded on his mentor, sand flying up from his feet at the swift turn. "Tell me honestly. Do you think we're ever going to be on a level where we can get involved in the real action around here?"

"Honestly? I've put some thought into it, and really I'm quite happy to be on the level we are!" Doc confessed. "If we ever make D-List, I'd call my ambitions satisfied. And should a miracle happen and we make it to C-List, I couldn't ask for anything better!"

The utter calm and clear certainty that Doc used to confess he was satisfied to be a punching bag, and didn't aim higher than to be an annoyance to the major players, offended Xander. And that barely pinging on the local radar was more than he realistically hoped to achieve just rubbed the younger man wrong in all sorts of ways.

Xander wasn't thinking what Doc was, that all local C-List players had already devoted at least ten years of their lives to dedicated martial arts practice, and on observing his young friends, Doc didn't really think he'd convince them to sink that much time into it.

B-List involved all of the grief and work of getting to C-List in the first place, plus an extreme amount of dedication that frankly most young people don't have, and he'd never observed in his younger self. And most of the A-List players either had *extreme* racial advantages, or had sunk a couple of hundred years into getting where they were.

None of that seemed remotely achievable, given the material they had on hand. So Doc was happy to get what advantages they could get out of the situation.

A D-List fighter from a Ranma Universe would scare the vampires and supernatural crawlies of a Buffy universe in ways that the Slayer had never done since the foundation of the line. But, of course, the young don't have perspective to see things in that light. All Xander knew was that he was being told he would never match up in the company he really wanted to keep. And, having been the one picked on, he now desired power to escape that state.

It was all a perfectly normal set of desires. Young men are frequently anxious to prove themselves significant in one way or another. And, having started down this road, Xander really wanted to finish in something other than last place.

Doc, not having been a young man in a long time, nor been very social in just as long, had forgotten something of this desire of the young to prove themselves.

Nevertheless, he saw Xander's depression and thought he had just the remedy for it.

"Don't worry!" Doc encouraged. "I've got something that I think will excite both of you!"

He then turned to walk up to a beach front vacation property that neither teen had been aware their path had been wending toward. It had the usual staples, big TV and all of the right electronics for wasting time on, but Doc just breezed past all of that, taking them directly from the front door to the internal access door to the attached garage.

When he opened it up and stood aside to let the teens see, Doc gloated, "Behold, the new time vehicle!"

Both teenagers goggled at the sleek, candy apple red sports car within.

"A corvette body, engine and power train," Doc explained. "Every component built from the best materials money can buy, each vehicle is entirely hand-built, designed exclusively to the buyer's tastes..."

"WHAT? You're SELLING these things?" Willow shrieked in horror.

"No!" Doc laughed in delight. "I'm quoting the salesman who sold me the car that I used for the body. It was impressive when I heard it at the time, so I thought I'd share. The base car cost me over two hundred thousand dollars."

"Doc," Xander interrupted. "It's a nice car, but it doesn't look worth *that* much money!"

"You aren't seeing the most important feature," Doc told him, gladly entering the garage to show him, and patting the hood as he declared, "This car is fully amphibious! The normal versions they produce, called Pythons, can do in excess of sixty miles per hour on the water. On the street they do a quarter mile in twelve seconds, or zero to sixty in four point five seconds. And it can hold up to six people, two in the front and four in the back."

"Why an amphibious car?" Willow looked puzzled.

Doc simply smiled at her. "Because we are in Japan! Have you done any looking around for an isolated stretch of road you could get a vehicle up to eighty eight on? A road that was empty so much of the time that you could reliably appear out of a time warp and not have a good probability of dropping right into traffic and ending up wrecked? I have, and couldn't find any. My next thought was a plane, but air traffic control gets pretty strict about who can fly, where and when, and popping in without a flight plan already filed would be trouble. So the only thing left was either to leave the country to travel through time, or use the water. A hydrofoil could make the speeds we wanted, but a boat would have to be stored most of the time, and could be vulnerable to theft. So I picked an amphibious car! Add on a touch of rocket boost, and a speed of sixty on the water becomes ninety. Plenty for a time jump."

"When did you do all of this?" Xander asked, puzzled about the house and new car.

Doc grinned, delighting in revealing his genius. "When I first went to do my banking that bought our house in Nerima, I made sure to take extra long and be very boring about it, prolonging the experience by shopping around through multiple financial institutions and then insurance companies to find the best deal. It took me days, and the pace of action in Nerima is so fast almost none of the major players have anything like the normal amount of human patience. By the time I was done with the process, I could be fairly certain none of the spies that could have followed me would have stayed around that long. At that point I felt safe to go get the time vehicle, get it back to the USA and make a jump to the future."

"You WHAT?" Both teens cried out in shock.

"Part of me was trusting none of the people watching us would think I'd make a jump without you two," Doc admitted. "And I was right. I was hoping that in the future on this world they'd have the technology I needed to make an antigravity flying car. No such luck. But they did have these. This model won't be available for another twenty years. And because the whole thing was constructed to my exact specifications, and with me working in the shop at my insistence (mostly so I'd later know how to repair it), it could hold the time circuit, fusion plant and dimension sliding devices more unobtrusively than the DeLorean. So it is not only a time vehicle, it does not really stand out as one the way the original model did."

Doc stepped over and opened the driver's side door, showing what looked to be a normal, if luxury, car interior. "See? Every readout and control has already been built into the dash right at the factory, so there is nothing to stand out that this is a modified vehicle. Some parts from the old DeLorean, the flux capacitor and Sylia's fusion plant, I transferred over. Others I just built new, to have something more reliable than my original scavenged parts. Besides, leaving most of the modifications to the original DeLorean intact, it made that much more convincing a decoy when we were eventually followed to it, and it got destroyed."

Willow was shaking her head. "You just about stopped our hearts when we saw that car destroyed. Couldn't you tell us that you'd already replaced it?"

"Unfortunately, no." Doc shook his head. "There were people at that conflict who would not give up for anything so long as any chance for success remained, and others who were watching our reactions very closely. It helped our charade pass despite those suspicions that your reactions were both so very genuinely dismayed. If it didn't matter to you that the old car got destroyed, many people would have concluded that wasn't the real one. This way, everyone got convinced the treasure they were after got destroyed. And, since they are used to that occurring fairly regularly in this series, they just went on with their lives!"

Doc climbing into the driver's seat, smiling at both of them. "Once it became known that we had a genuine time vehicle, the only way we'd ever get enough peace and safety to use it was if everyone thought it had already been destroyed. And your genuine grief over the loss of that vehicle, even after the fight was over, helped reinforce the illusion that it was!"

Xander had cocked his head suspiciously at the Doc. "Hey, how come, if you took out the parts that made the DeLorean into a time machine, and it was in the future, you could bring it back here for those people to destroy it?"

"Tow hitch." Doc thumbed towards the back of the new car. "It took a little wrangling to get one, since the normal place for one is where the water jet is mounted, but we worked out something that functioned with an adapted trailer. I told them I wanted to haul my jet skies to the beach with me, and they took it unexamined. But instead I hooked up a trailer that let me haul the DeLorean back in time, so I could have it shipped back to the place we'd left it, in time for it to be destroyed. Then I hid this one here. This beach house is owned by a holding corporation, so it couldn't be traced to us."

"If it's only safe to use if no one knows we have it, doesn't that mean it isn't safe now?" Willow asked intently.

Doc gave her one of his wildest grins. "Everyone who knows we had a time machine and might be interested, *and* has enough handle on daily events to watch our comings and goings, just left this morning on a trip that took them to Toma's island."

"So why are we leaving now?" Xander asked, spreading his hands. "We only just got started!"

"Precisely!" Doc crowed. "The less we do in the here and now, the less chance we lose anything when we go back in time and change things. This not being our own home universe, we can't erase ourselves from existence. But there's no reason to take chances we'd lose all our training."

"Lose all our training? You mean we went through that for NOTHING?" Xander shrieked.

"Not necessarily," Doc soothed. "We've never really been more than anonymous students. One of the things we're going to change should get the Tendo Dojo running as a business again, like it was when Soun founded it. So there is a good chance that they will train several hundred people up to our current level, and we could slip right in and go unnoticed. One thing I've learned is that the time stream does not tend to erase events unless it has to. But all the same, if we should stay around and train up to a very high level, those kind of people stand out, and it would be hard for martial artists of any significant level to remain unchanged when we go and work surgery on the past."

"So why are we changing the past?" Xander demanded.

Doc paused and grew still, quietly contemplative, which was such a change from his usual explosive energy that it really struck the teens. "Because, I told you, I took a trip to the future of this world, and it doesn't end well for any of the people we know here in Nerima." Doc looked up at his friends, seeming almost vulnerable. "I made myself a promise to save my friends when I could. And, well, the people here, weird as they are, are my friends now. I can't just sit back and watch their lives fall apart when I know I can save them."

Willow's eyes softened towards the old man.

"Besides," Doc went on, reclaiming his usual energy. "This is our first real opportunity since we got here. Our one chance to find those Aging Mushrooms was by tracking Ryoga when he stumbled across them, and that happened only a couple of days ago. Now we have the location and can harvest our own. And today all the usual suspects who might have followed us to the time machine are off on that adventure to Toma's island. So this is the first time we've had both the means, and the privacy, to leave able to carry out our plans."

Doc popped out of the driver's seat and began to load things into the back, including a shrink-wrapped set of clothes, and changed the subject. "I had to rearrange the internal spaces on this vehicle anyway, when I was including the fusion plant and other specialty devices, so I took the opportunity to arrange a bit of extra storage. But this really isn't a cargo vehicle. If we need something for that, we can always hook up a trailer. But I don't have an amphibious one, so for now we can only take just what we can stuff in the car."

Xander's eye's had caught hold of the incongruous package of shrink-wrapped clothes. "What's that?"

"A mild affectation," Doc answered, hurrying around to put a suitcase full of cash into the car. "I told Ranma that I'd like to look into seeing if I could find some way to make his clothes hold a male charge, despite his being female half the time, and so he gave me a set to run tests on. These are they. I was hoping, when we find another universe like ours, that maybe we could use them as a Halloween costume someday. I was going to add it to the suitcase of old costumes I always keep in my trunk."

Xander shifted to his other foot. "Yeah, well Doc, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Willow was in the trunk, remember? Besides, do you recall putting away my Iron Man costume? The suitcase was beside the car, not in the trunk."

"I know. I'm starting my collection over. Maybe someday we can use it."

"I've got a better idea," Xander stated. Then he shot Doc in the butt with his tranq pistol. "We'll use it now."

The teen then tossed both the pistol and Doc himself into the car, before taking the keys and sliding into the driver's seat. Looking up at his friend, he said, "C'mon, Willow!"

A concerned Willow scampered into the passenger seat. "Are you sure we should be doing this?"

"Listen," Xander turned the key to start the ignition, then hit the remote to open the garage door. "I just went though hell learning martial arts, and he tells me we've got to start over again? Or that we'll never be more than nobodies? Ain't gunna happen. Not even if we have to take the chance of risking a brief trip home."

Finding the dimensional coordinates for home on the in-dash computer console's menu, Xander locked them in and then sped off out the garage doors.

OoOoO

The dimensional sliding device deposited the vehicle near a gaping sinkhole that used to be Sunnydale, under a swirling purple sky with red orange ground.

"Dang!" Xander slapped the steering wheel. "This is the wrong place!"

"Doc was the one to program the computer," Willow shyly ventured. "He must have used the coordinates for his world as home instead of ours."

"Well, if I can just find the backup sliding device," Xander began rooting around the dash.

"AAAaaHHHH!" Willow's hair stood on end as a four-story tall goat legged demon reared up out of the ruins to look at them hungrily.

Xander's foot mashed down on the gas pedal, and he swung the steering wheel around to miss the wrecked cars littering the roads. "It's no use!" He shouted. "Doc must have it behind a hidden panel, like last time! I can't find the backup slider thingy!"

"Use the time machine!" Willow was already programming coordinates.

"Will it be alright? Doc said that was forbidden!"

"It's better than getting eaten!" she yelled back, as the goat-legged demon proved that, while it couldn't quite make zero to sixty in four point five, it wasn't far behind either.

"Alright! But I can't get it up to eighty eight dodging all these ruined cars!"

"The car's amphibious!" Willow reminded as another demon, a tentacled, multi-eyed thing also poked up out of the ruins to observe them.

Xander turned the wheel off the crowded coastal road, and soon the vehicle was racing down the beach towards, then onto the water. Willow had already found the control, and they switched modes, already igniting the hydrogen powered rockets Doc had added for extra speed and acceleration on the water.

A serrated, black fin at least fifteen feet tall split the water and began to head towards them.

Xander punched it and steered away. Soon lightning charges built up around them, and between one tick of time and the next, they were suddenly on a normal colored stretch of sea just outside of Sunnydale, California, on what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary night.

No demon or anything of the sort was behind them.

Breathing a deep sigh of relief, Xander killed the rockets and turned the car towards shore.

OoOoO

Ding! Ding!

"Welcome to Ethan's. May I help you?"

Willow stared around in some shock, recognizing no less than three different customers in the store at that time as Doc in various lame disguises. One was purchasing a costume of Gandalf the White. Figuring they all must be past versions of the man she was growing to know, she turned to face the chaos mage with a fake smile in place. "Yes, I was looking for some more of these."

She held up Ranma's silk Chinese shirt and pants.

Ethan fingered the fabric. "I don't recognize the character. Couldn't I interest you in a pirate instead? You might have more fun if more people are able to tell what you are at a glance."

"I'm sure." Willow's stress got the better of her and caused her to babble. "The character is a favorite of my boyfriend and I, and he's something of a chaos magnet," she didn't notice Ethan's eyes perk up at this mention, as she blathered on, "and once he fell into a cursed spring and now he turns into a girl..." realizing she'd begun to babble, Willow caught herself and contained it, concluding, "anyway, he wants to dress as boy side, and I'll go as girl."

"Interesting." Ethan was truly fascinated. It sounded fun. "Do you have any pictures of this character?"

Somewhat innocently, Willow reached into her purse, pulled out her wallet, and produced two snapshots of when Ranma had been dressed up for various things. One was of a fairly classic pose from the manga, where girl Ranma was standing on one foot posing with a huge sword in a fancy outfit. Another was of Ranma's male side that was also dressed up, this time for a fancy contest.

She had others, but these seemed appropriate.

"Interesting," Ethan accepted the images, noting these were photographs instead of the line drawings he'd half been expecting. Oh, yes. This could be so much fun! He didn't know where these came from, but the idea of dressing as real people had some appeal, and a chaos magnet to boot?

This could be the funnest costume he sold all year.

"Well, both these costumes seem much more interesting to wear than the simple one you have there. Yes, I think I have something in the back matching these. I'll go get it." Grabbing a couple of low-end costumes from off the racks that didn't look like they would sell anyway, the chaos mage dismissed himself to the back, where he used magic to transform those into matches for the clothes the person was wearing in the photographs.

"Yes, just where I'd left them," Ethan emerged with a big smile from the back carrying the two outfits he'd created, gave them to the girl along with her photos, and began to ring up the sale.

"We'll need three pigtails," Willow blurted before he was through. "Two black, one red."

Ethan calmly added those to the sale.

OoOoO

"What are you doing?" Xander came out of the rest stop bathroom where he'd changed into the boy-type Ranma costume, still affixing the false pigtail to the back of his hair.

Willow, wearing the fancy Ranko outfit, looked up from where she'd just changed the still-comatose Doc into Ranma's old shirt and pants, complete with store-bought pigtail. She herself had on the slippers, while Xander wore the boxers underneath his store-bought costume. "Well, he did invent the machine. I didn't want him to feel left out, and we weren't using those parts anyway."

Xander thought about it, then shrugged. "Alright. I guess that it couldn't hurt anything. How soon do you think..."

That was when the wave of chaos magic spreading across town hit them.

OoOoO

The town shook.

"What?" Ranko and Ranma blurted on seeing each other, only to get cut off as the concussive wave of an explosion ripped past, bending trees and causing the collapse of billboards.

Both martial artists were already in motion to a point where they could see.

There was a fifty foot combat robot neither recognized spraying missiles and gunfire at a much larger robot standing out to sea. A tank roared past, apparently fleeing from a guy who was completely on fire and trying to roast the fleeing vehicle.

The crack of a sonic boom, with accompanying shockwave, blew past their position with a streak of red, on its way to save a crowd of civilians from missile impacts, blown off course by a floating guy who was flinging about all sorts of metal just by waving his hands, doing battle with something neither teen could see.

"Was that?" Ranko asked, blinking away afterimages of red cape.

"Superman. Yeah." Ranma agreed.

After a second of observation, during which it became obvious that Superman was fully engaged in diverting missiles, beam weapons, and other things launched by the giant offshore robot from flattening the town, there were only about a dozen major sources of conflict.

Ranma being Ranma, even when he was Ranko, the two martial artists immediately began to head toward them.

It was a martial artist's duty to protect the innocent.

OoOoO

"Oooh! My head! I wonder what Akane cooked this time." Ranma sat up, only realizing after he did so he was in the back seat of a car he didn't recognize, instead of his usual room at the Tendo Dojo.

With his chi burning off whatever poison was in his system quickly, he soon began to think straighter. Only it didn't help, as he had no idea what he'd done to get to this place, or what was going on.

Deciding he needed more information, and suiting thought to action, Ranma was already in motion to a point where he could get a better view of the surrounding area, unknowingly echoing the actions of two other Ranmas from only moments ago.

There he saw the same big battle going on, and also decided to head in to help.

OoOoO

"DIE MUTANT!" The guy in heavy armor shouted, firing away full-auto with a gun whose bore was so big the individual bullets had to be about the size of soda cans.

"Mutant? Why, yes. I am," the floating guy replied, calmly, even negligently diverting the stream of shots harmless to either side of himself.

"I am a psyker of the Grey Knights!" The guy in heavy armor yelled. "In the Emperor's Name, I'll..."

The guy's helmet twisted backwards, and the self-described mutant calmly replied, "Shut up." Then he paused. "Hm. Amusing. You aren't as 'pure' as you might have thought, not with those implants running through your system. You might be interesting, after all."

The Grey Knight's helmet righted itself, twisting around straight again. But he made no move, and the mutant apparently lost interest in him. "Oh well, we'll leave him to heal himself with those 'psyker' powers of his. Now, you two interest me."

Ranma and Ranko, newly arrived, stared at each other, then darted away.

Luckily the Human Torch was returning to town and diverted Magneto's attention.

OoOoO

Some super-strong creature heaved half a town's block worth of concrete into the air, only for it to get gently replaced by Superman, returning from having dealt with the Warhammer Titan out to sea. Overturned tanks and wrecked buildings filled the landscape, but Flash had been speeding about, saving people all evening.

Ranma kicked The Terminator through a building, noting only that he'd done that nine times now, and that the guy seemed incapable of being knocked out.

He'd generally been trying to take it easy on non-martial artists, even when they were crazy nutcases bearing laser rifles. You'd have thought the guy would have gotten the message when Ranma had disarmed him and bent those laser rifles into a pretzel. But no, the guy kept coming. Of the dozen or so super-soldiers he'd personally taken care of this evening, this guy had the worst stubborn streak out of the lot. It was like he was facing someone with Ryoga's determination, but less than Akane's ability.

The only hard part about it was taking the guy down without hurting him too badly.

OoOoO

The Sorcerer Supreme and Gandalf met each other at the door to a certain costume shop, sized one another up, then smiled.

Gandalf nodded towards the door. "Well, shall we?"

OoOoO

"OOOOOOHH! Ouch!" Doc impacted the rock face of the wall on a building rooftop he'd been in mid-jump to as Ranma, before sliding painfully down the side.

All across town, the spell ended with similar results. People, mostly him in various guises, got caught in mid-motion, doing something they couldn't ordinarily manage, and found that out the hard way.

He was lucky the Superman-him hadn't been flying or lifting a heavy weight over his head at the time, and that the Flash-him had been running across the surface of a swimming pool when the spell cut, or that would have been the end of him.

Astonished to find himself back in this time, in this reality, nevertheless Doc still gathered his wits and tried to recall, "Let's see. I know all the places I used to hide the time machine on previous trips. But I can't seem to recall..."

"Doc!" Xander and Willow appeared, each having caught a hint of the red of his costume.

"You were warned." Whistler appeared at the end of the alley they were in to state.

His neck was snapped almost before Xander realized his fist was moving. As the body fell, he turned a stricken gaze to his mentor. "Tell me that was a Balance Demon, Doc."

"Oh, that was the one that threatened me, alright." Doc got painfully to his feet, feeling the fresh bruises on his face, as well as the fatigue and damage he'd picked up by spending two hours as Ranma, and participating in a large number of fights. "Knowing the kind of chaos it was possible to unleash by appearing in various costumes, I'd always taken some form of anesthetic before the spell hit, just as a precaution. Then, on my last trip here, that demon," he motioned to Whistler, "appeared to tell me not to time travel in this universe anymore. Then, as proof he had the ability to destroy me, undid all the medications keeping my previous selves asleep, unleashing all of this violence. He then claimed the PTB kept any of my selves from dying in that battle *this* time, but if I interfered again, they would not be so generous. Given how even the slightest change in that ongoing battle could so easily wind up with one copy of me dead, I complied, and went elsewhere."

Doc shook his head and stared at his two companions. "How did we end up here, anyway?"

Xander blushed. "That would be my fault, Doc. I guess I was so upset at what you said about none of us really having a chance to rise above C-List that I lost what good sense you've been trying to drill into me, and tried to go home to wear Ranma's clothes as a costume."

"Only the setting for 'home' is my dimension, not yours," Doc concluded, then leaned on his fellow travelers. "Well, I can't save I never did anything rash or foolish in my youth. But I hope you've learned your lesson from it."

"Yeah, Doc. I was stupid." Xander gazed around at the destruction as they limped together out of Sunnydale. "Dang! This scheme was almost Genma-level of stupid," he whispered to himself.

Doc smiled. "Put that way, that level of rash action without thinking is kind of typical of the universe we've just been spending time in. Perhaps the influence of that universe had something to do with your making that decision."

Doc sighed, raising his head to look around at the damage that short fight had caused, and knowing that multiple past copies of him were even now sneaking off in various directions, towards their own stashed time machines. It was a tangled mess, and he breathed a sigh of relief to have survived it another time. "At least you didn't nearly wipe yourself out of existence," he reassured the younger Xander.

"Yeah, about that, Doc. I've been doing some thinking," Xander announced. "And I don't think these PTB would have warned ya if they could have eliminated ya as easily as they'd like ya ta think, Doc. And they wouldn't have bothered saving your life when you were fighting yourself, either! If you were a threat, they'd just have let you kill yourself tonight. No, for some reason, the PTB wants you alive. I just... don't get what that reason is."

"Maybe they liked the way things turned out?" Willow ventured. "I mean, it sounds like they got everything they wanted. Maybe they could see that future, liked it, and since Doc was involved in getting events there they couldn't just lose him and trust that everything would turn out perfectly without him."

Both men looked at her.

"I don't know. It's just a guess!" she returned.

"No, Miss Rosenberg. I think you're right. No matter how many hands were played, if a gambler cleaned out the pot with a perfect hand, he wouldn't want to undo that and play over with a fresh deal. So, if one element that contributed to him getting that hand were to go missing, he would no longer be certain of victory. Still, they know the rules. We don't know what they can or cannot do. So let's get out of here."

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Actually, in the movies they make it pretty plain that the characters never forget what they've been through, even when time has been altered so those experiences would no longer have been possible.

In the show, the past gets rewritten frequently, sometimes with major, sometimes with minor alterations. Marty actually spends most of his time shouting, screaming, fainting or otherwise emoting over stuff he would've known about if his memory had been updated to follow the new timeline, rather than very obviously knowing only what his past would be if history had not been changed.

No, there's no way to support that logically. But it's the way time travel in the series works. Perhaps it's something to do with the time machine, the flux capacitor sheltering them or something odd like that, but unless the time travelers wipe themselves out of existence, they do not get changed. They remember events that could no longer have happened under the new history, but do not recall things they would obviously know if they knew anything about their new lives. 


	7. Chapter 7

Eighty Eight Miles Per Hour  
Chapter Seven

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Lionheart  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

In a downpour in Nerima five hazy figures walked into focus.

"Well, I still say this whole thing sucks! Picking my fiancee without even asking!" A small, redhaired girl wearing Chinese silks complained.

"Silly, Ranko." Nodoka chided her daughter lovingly. "This isn't about that at all."

"Yeah, Ranko-honey, chill out," Ukyo added tenderly to her best friend.

Ranko blinked several times. "You mean, this big meeting isn't about springing some arranged marriages on us?"

This earned general laughs.

"Oh course not, Ranko-Darling," Kodachi chided her friend.

"Oh," the redhaired girl felt abashed at jumping to conclusions like that.

"Yeah. Who do you take your father for, Genma?" Ukyo teased.

"Don't even JOKE about THAT!" Ranko yelled, before shivering in terror at the thought.

This earned general laughter once more.

Once again, all five girls began to peaceably resume their walk through the rain.

OoOoO

"That's strange." Soun Tendo put down the third postcard, and picked up the next one, out of a pile of what looked to be a dozen, but could be twenty. "Why would Genma Saotome be coming? And... why would he send so many cards saying so?"

He looked up. "Kurumi? Natsume? Do you know anything about this?"

Both girls shook their heads, hair flying. The taller one leaned through the door to the kitchen to ask, "Mom? Do you know why Genma Saotome would be coming over?"

Kimiko Tendo came out drying a dish with a towel. "No, dear. Why do you ask?"

"Cause he sent about twenty cards to Dad saying so."

Kurumi got to her feet, heading toward the dojo where two of her sisters were practicing before they had to teach class that evening. "Oh, well. I guess I'll go ask if Nabiki or Kasumi has heard anything."

"I'll go ask Akane," Natsume volunteered. "Swim club should be out now. Maybe one of her friends can think of why someone would send a dozen cards with the same message."

"It must be important to him," Soun said, examining the cards. "But... why does each card have a different name of who he says he is bringing?"

"Girls, don't take too long. Honey, don't forget the big meeting in an hour," Kimiko's voice called out from the kitchen.

"Right," five girls and one man's voice replied.

OoOoO

In the downpouring rain a short, redhaired girl ran before a giant panda.

"As usual, your hypothesis is flawed, your evidence missing and your theories are highly questionable!" the short girl declared as she dodged the large paw strikes of the giant bear.

The bear held up a sign. [Shut up!]

Hopping over a sweep and delivering a spin kick to the bear's head, the little girl sped on to alight on top of a stop sign. "Your intellectual capacity leaves so much to be desired that one wonders if you aren't smarter as a dumb animal."

The bear leaped up to attack, and the little girl just grinned as she shifted her weight slightly and fell directly off the sign downwards, slashing it with an arm movement as she did so, cutting off the top of the pole so it came to a sharp, jagged point.

The bear, which had been about to steal her perch for its own since it could no longer divert its momentum by battling her in mid-air, saw that it was about to land on a tall, sharp, metal spike and flailed its arms about for purchase, finding a last moment rescue when it caught hold on a telephone pole and clung there like a koala.

"And that's a wrap," the girl declared smugly.

CHUNK!

The giant panda slid mindlessly off the pole to thud, unconscious, to the ground, all of it's attention having been on the girl, it failed to notice the person with the tranq dart pistol until it was already far too late.

"Doc?" Xander asked, as Willow lowered the pistol.

"Yep! That's me!" The short, redhaired girl identified herself with a thumb thrust towards her own bosom. "So, what did we learn? Was the experiment a success?"

Cologne appeared out of the rain beside her to answer the question. "Amazing. You truly do travel through time."

"You *ought* to believe it!" Doc declared abruptly. "Especially after we'd presented you all those receipts we got from you and your family every time we entered your life to prevent a major disaster *you* had warned us about."

"Yes, well hopefully you'll forgive a little skepticism on an old woman's part. Anyway, to answer your question, yes, I did observe your training under this imbecile, and I can tell you the last half of your journey was wasted. You'd learned everything he had to teach in the first five years. After that, it was just a repeat, him using his greater body mass and dirty tricks to seem like a challenge, even when he had no more techniques to offer."

"So, we only need five years under this guy?" Doc double-blinked up into the rain, thinking. "Well, that's something to know, I guess. But if we cut the training trips short what are we going to do with all of the other Genmas?"

"You'll figure something out, I'm sure," Cologne chuckled darkly.

The short redhead cocked her head, observing the much older crone. "So, you observed my training. Counting yourself as an A-List, and your great-granddaughter as a B rank, what would you say I was? Would I rank a C in your eyes?"

"Oh, easily," the old crone replied. "Middle to high C, even showing some potential to move up to B with a little encouragement and the right training."

"YES!" Doc pumped a fist with enough energy droplets of water sprang off her body. Then she raised her arms high to the air, "Experiment a success!" she crowed. "That ten year training trip was *totally* worth it!"

"Why should you be surprised?" Willow shook her head, wiping rain out of her eyes. "That was the goal, wasn't it?"

"Well, yeah." Doc admitted. "But just because you want something, doesn't always mean that you'll get it. I found out not long into this that a few memories of being Ranma Saotome, martial arts prodigy, and the hazy recollections of all the things he'd learned that brought with it, provided an amazing amount of support to my attempts to equal his talents and learn his skills as my very own. But, it turned out to be only enough advantage to offset how brilliant the actual guy is at learning martial arts. Ranma, before we altered time, ended this trip as a solid C. So I count myself lucky to have done as well as he did."

"Hmm, luck might not have much to do with it," Cologne growled. "Remember, I've been watching this fool, and the simple fact of the matter is, C-List is as high as Genma knows how to train anyone."

Doc touched her chin in thought. "You know, that makes a certain amount of sense. Genma himself almost certainly capped out at C-List in his prime, before going to seed and sliding down to a mediocre D. He might have achieved more, he *did* invent two devastating styles, but he sealed both schools he'd invented, and never really got much use out of them. If he had fully incorporated them into his own style, he might've gained B-List, or even more. It's difficult to say, because the man's appetite for laziness and pleasures rivals that of his master's desire for panties, so it was probably inevitable at some point that Genma would let himself slide down to mediocrity again, no matter what he'd invented."

Doc shrugged her dripping wet shoulders. "As had, indeed, occurred."

Xander cocked his head, shedding drops in the rain. "If he's so lazy, why did he go on this training trip?"

"Easier than working for a living," Doc spurned the bear with her foot, then sat on him. "After all that training under his Master, he was an expert on how to survive by theft and begging. What makes you think he liked the idea of giving that up to go honest? Can you really picture this guy in a suit and tie, showing up for work like an average salaryman?"

Xander shook his head. No, he couldn't.

"Wait," Willow questioned. "If Genma himself is only D-List, how did he train you to C-List? I don't get how that works."

"Hmm," Cologne considered. "The fact that he can train a student to be slightly better than himself is likely due to two factors: he starts when they are still very young, when he has a huge advantage for size, and he used that extra reach and mass and strength for all it was worth, thus forcing his students to learn greater skill to compensate for those physical advantages, and making them better than he is. Also, Genma has a talent for memorizing the weak points of his students, then using those against them at every opportunity."

Cologne narrowed her eyes at the sleeping panda. "Now this is not a good thing: a good teacher, on recognizing a student's weak points, will point those out and work with the child to help eliminate them. Genma just hits them with every dirty trick he has, in a considerable arsenal of dirty tricks, in order to stay in control. Basically, he steals every unfair advantage he can get. In this way he compensates for having less skill than his students. But it puts an absolute limit on him and them, so long as he is the sole teacher."

Cologne sighed. "Sadly, you'll probably need another ten years under a real instructor to train out of you all of those bad habits he deliberately trained into you."

Doc cocked her head, looking disturbingly like Willow, actually. "But if we'd cut it off at five years, then it would only take five years under another teacher to lose those bad habits?"

"Probably," Cologne conceded.

"Well, that's a plan, then." Doc nodded decisively, water droplets flying from her hair.

"I will say one thing, though," the crone allowed. "Presuming Genma is just following the tenets of his master, the Anything Goes style does overcome one of the most significant barriers to teaching students - just not in a way that I would have allowed."

"Oh?" Both Xander and Willow perked up, despite the rain.

"Yes," Cologne confirmed. "You see, no one can teach a student who is unwilling to learn. No one, that is, except a master of Anything Goes. It appears to be part of the style that the teacher will irritate the student until striking back is all the poor child can think of, and then they spar endlessly, with the instructor relying on his superior ability to remain unharmed, even while he annoys his pupil to new heights of effort in attempts to get back at him for being the source of near-constant aggravation. So, by being petty, annoying pests, they can force any student to become motivated to learn - if only to shut them up."

Doc laughed, forcing the others to look at her, before she wiped a tear from one eye. "So I guess Ranma *was* trying to teach Akane after all! He just wasn't able to carry through on it - probably because of their dads defending her stopping it from being effective."

"Hmm," Cologne filed that information away for later. "Well, anyway, as per our agreement, I observed this fat fool teach you, and really that's all he did. When he wanted you to learn a new skill, or refine your technique, he took you to one of those dojos and temples or other places to let the masters there do the actual instruction. His only contribution was to give you the motivation to use, adapt, and incorporate what they taught you into your style by being so blindingly annoying that you'd do anything, reach into the very depths of your soul, to get back at him. But I'm really not sure of the value of a school that forces the students to hate their teachers."

Doc stopped laughing and scowled. "Yeah. I guess I never thought about it before, but if you love your kids, and want them to love you, you'd never be able to teach them this way. Maybe that's why Soun's daughters never got much skill in his school - he couldn't bear for them to hate him for it. Brrr! That's a scary thought."

Cologne smiled. "Perhaps their master had different ways, and this is just the only technique for teaching Genma picked up."

Doc stood up. "If so, he probably only used it on little kids. Everything I know about how he trained these bozos is exactly like Genma did for me - cause trouble, and force the pupil to deal with it, then like you said be so annoying they'd do anything to beat your face in."

"That does seem to be the core of the Anything Goes teaching style in a nutshell," Cologne agreed.

"So what happens now?" Willow leaned forward to ask.

"We go ahead with the plan," Doc shrugged her shoulders. "As far as I'm concerned, hating Genma should be one way to certify mental health. It proves you're able to think clearly. So we can afford to have all those students we've lined up despise him. We just cut short the trips we had planned from ten years back down to five, then find some other teachers."

"And what is your plan?" Cologne inquired.

Doc toed Genma with her foot. "Only what you agreed to. We force-feed this moron a mushroom we've grown that makes him ten years younger than he is now. You shampoo him so he forgets three things: me, the fact that he's already been on the training trip we just finished, but that he was always going to take to train up an heir, and anything he did on it. Then we dump his ass ten years in the past and hypnotize him to believe that someone else is his student, and get him to train them up to speed."

"So the ten men I agreed to shampoo are all him?" Cologne poked the slumbering panda with her staff. "Interesting. But erasing the last ten years of a man's life is only possible if you have already fed him a fixative. Basically, you feed a man a pill, then you can cause him to forget everything back to the moment he took that pill. It's too late for that now."

"Nah, we'll just go ten years in the past, and feed it to him there," Doc confidently stated. "I know just the moment, too. Right before the training journey. Provided I shrink myself back down to six, I can even walk right up to him and hand it to him. He'd asked for headache pills, this'll just be one more in the bunch. Say, can you do anything that will help convince him that different people each time are his student and heir?"

"Yes, I could do that," the old crone scratched out.

"Good," Doc touched her lip and gazed upwards in thought. "So, let's see. Anything left out? We already convinced this guy he was married to Nodoka - with the only result that he'll do anything to avoid her. But since that's just his delusion, she's free to marry whoever she wants. We still have to pair her up with someone, though, so she can have Ranma. But we were going to do that in the past anyway. I dunno, can you guys think of anything else?"

Both Xander and Willow shook their heads.

"Okay then." Doc lifted up the giant, sleeping panda and threw him over one shoulder. "Let's get to it! Who wants to go next?"

"I'll do it," Xander volunteered, amazed at the ease with which Doc moved and fought, but also slightly envious, and eagerly anticipating being that good himself.

Willow interrupted. "If we're going to have him do the training journey again and again, won't Genma run into himself?"

The action stopped.

"I can take care of that," Cologne volunteered. "We've got a False Face curse, used as a prank among us, but that prevents a person from recognizing himself in a mirror, or anything like it. So this fool could run into himself, and neither one would know the other was him. You'll probably also want me to convince him that turning into a panda is a curse he got from raiding some temple or other," Cologne advised as she followed the trio into the rain.

"Oh, that's right." Doc's voice drifted through the rain as the group departed. "Thanks for protecting me from the Cat Fist, by the way. So it worked shampooing him to forget that?"

"Not as well as you might think," the crone voice came drifting back through the storm. "He just kept getting into other harebrained training schemes just as bad. Apparently, that one colossal failure taught him the only vestige of caution he'd ever known. So I had to give him a false memory of it in order to keep him from creating more trouble."

"Yeah, that's the old panda, all right," Doc's voice drifted off as the group disappeared off into the rain.

OoOoO

Xander's training trip was a success.

Willow's was not.

"So there *are* different teaching techniques for use on girls," Cologne observed as they all watched the pre-locked-in-a-cave (the first time) Happosai in one of his kinder moments teaching the orphans Kurumi and Natsume - all the while pretending to be Soun Tendo, of course. No point in wasting an opportunity to dump problems on his students later, even if all that trouble was a pair of girls who'd show up out of nowhere and love him dearly (then, of course, because they were older and more skilled, displace his actual daughters as heirs to the dojo - all par for the course around here).

"Meow, isn't that surprising."

The group all collectively glanced down to where Willow, only seven years old at present, was wearing a pair of fake cat ears and playing with a ball of string, apparently unconcerned with the action going on below.

They'd had to pull her out of Genma's training trip early after she'd suffered a nervous breakdown. She'd never taken well to being teased in the first place, and Genma made Cordelia, her ancient, childhood nemesis, look like a saint. The end result? She'd run away several times, until she'd finally gotten good enough at it to evade the panda. Then she'd spent a year on the run, supporting herself as an absolutely phenomenal thief, until they'd made their scheduled check-in in the time machine.

Cologne had first postulated that Genma had somehow slipped through his shampooing enough to remember the Cat Fist, but Xander and Doc knew better. Willow, in desperation to escape the much superior martial artist teasing, belittling and insulting her, had gotten the same type of hopeless desperation that had awoken Doc to his costume memories as the inventor of a time machine, and in her this brought out her recollection of Catwoman. She'd then had nearly a year to practice those skills, and seemed almost as fond of the personality quirks as she was of the very profitable cat burglar abilities - and she'd become an all but unstoppable thief, in the absence of a Caper Crusader to halt her crimes. Fortunately, she was still Willow, so preferred to steal only from bad people.

"That's certainly not how his disciple taught me," Willow posed cutely, content to play harmless and adorable, quite aware the Yakuza had placed a billion yen bounty on her pretty, masked head. Or, would in two years after she'd skipped out on Genma's training journey and started helping herself to their ill-gotten gains.

"Right," Doc agreed, guilt flooding through him at what had been done to Willow. He'd once thought yearly check-ups to be plenty. It had been for Xander.

But not Willow.

Of course, having broken through whatever barrier prevented most people from recalling their costumes once, that opened the very real and distinct possibility that she could now gain the full benefit any of them had from having dressed as Ranma, so it became important to find out how to get her trained up so she could use those abilities, too.

Genma's training journey with Ranma had only begun once his master had been safely disposed of, locked in that cave. On discovering how badly Genma had messed Willow up, their team had come back in time to find out how Happosai taught girls, in hopes of learning how to fix what his student had done to their Willow-shaped friend.

All focus returned to study of the action going on below, except Willow, who began to play kittenish little games with a round ball, taking joy in exaggerating her assumed feline traits.

"He's actually being *tender* with them?" Xander blurted, currently eleven years old after having been shrunk down to six, then had five years of training journey. He could not begin to adequately express his disbelief. He didn't take his eyes off those binoculars, though.

"Reasonable," Cologne remarked, still watching the scene develop herself. "Little boys are more physical, while girls are more social. Engaging the combative instincts of a boy child is easy. Girls, on the other hand, respond better to different treatment."

Nobody mentioned Willow currently drinking from a bottle of cream.

The matriarch sighed, lowering the glasses. "What I wouldn't give for a recording of this. We know from what you said of the future that this short contact engages those girls in more than ten years of devotion. How anyone could get two students to master a martial art in just a few weeks of instruction, before abandoning them to self-practice, is beyond me. But it could revolutionize teaching the young people of our tribe if we knew how."

Doc, still sixteen and female as she hadn't done much but make a couple of time jumps since concluding her own training journey, not even affording time for a bath yet, spoke calmly, "I'll go back in time a few weeks and set up recorders, keyed to a remote. Provided I use equipment from the future the microphones and cameras can be a couple of blocks away, and so long as they are focused on the right spots, we'll have more than adequate recordings of everything he does with them."

"How will you know the right spots?" Xander asked.

"By taking a wide-angle long distance recording first," Doc answered calmly. "That will show all of the locations that need to be covered by the more focused recording equipment."

Cologne shook her head. "It never ceases to amaze me how casually you go through time. I hope you don't mind satisfying an old woman's curiosity, but why did you trust me with your secret? You could easily have ruled the world with that device of yours."

"I trust you because you are trustworthy," Doc replied. "Besides, we had only half of the necessary abilities to pull this off, the time travel and future knowledge parts. You had those memory-altering shampoos that really make the whole situation work. So we couldn't have done this alone. Beside, what type of moron wants to rule the Earth? That only means you get blamed for everything that goes wrong!"

Cologne chuckled. "I like your attitude, child."

While this short exchange had been going on Willow had already stolen off and joined the two girls currently being taught by Happosai, with all of the self-assurance of a cat, simply walking up and taking part in the instruction as though no one had any right to refuse her.

And Happosai, amused by this, received her.

The three others watching freaked out when they looked back through their binoculars, but couldn't do anything about it.

OoOoO

The next day Willow had Soun's three real daughters involved.

Nobody asked how.

Happosai didn't even seem to notice that he had Soun's actual daughters involved, and just went on happily, including the new girls in his training.

Doc got excellent recordings of the whole thing.

Willow didn't see fit to mention for a couple of years that she'd arranged a few weeks after he'd finished with this group for Happosai to train another half-dozen girls.

A six-year-old Nodoka, the girl who was one day to be Ranma's mother was one of those girls. As was Kimiko Tendo, the mother of Soun's daughters. Willow playfully pointed out that it didn't seem fair that all of the rest of their familys' members were these impressive martial artists, when they didn't get to play, too.

It also became plain that Ukyo and Kodachi's mothers had been another two girls in that later group. They found that out when they ran into them on planned intercessions meant to save their lives so they could be there to raise their daughters as happy, healthy people.

Willow seemed to take a playful delight in not telling anyone who was involved in that second group of girls, content to let them figure it out for themselves.

Needless to say, this made certain of their planned adjustments... interesting.

OoOoO

"One question I don't get," Xander offered one moment between time trips. "We've got everything rigged to get Genma to mass-produce martial artists. So, who are we going to get to teach girls?"

"Oh, I've already taken care of that," Willow drawled lazily, almost purring.

All attention focused on her.

She delighted in it, and preened. "Well, it struck me that as one of the worst misogynists in the whole series, he could use to learn the same lessons Ranma did about the fairer sex, and so I stole the time machine, grabbed Genma when he was six, dunked him in the Spring of Drowned Twins, then dunked his twin in the Spring of Drowned Girl, locked them both, then delivered the young girl Genko to Happosai to get trained along with the other mothers of our martial arts friends."

A cold breeze blew by as everything stayed perfectly still.

"How did you lock in those curses?" Cologne asked at last. "The only way I know of..."

Willow held up a familiar wooden ladle. "Oh, I had to go steal the Locking Ladle from the Musk to do it, of course. But then, since I didn't want anything to go wrong with that event in the future, I went ahead and locked their leader as a girl at the same time. Guy deserved it. Would you believe Herb was even more of a sexist than Genma?"

Another moment of stunned silence came and passed.

"Wait. 'Other mothers'?" Cologne's scratchy voice sounded horrified.

Willow giggled. "Yes. It turns out Kodachi's mother had too much self-respect after her martial arts lessons to grow up to marry Kodachi's father. So, *somebody* had to marry Principal Kuno, just cause you never know for certain what mischief rich folks would get up to if they don't have an heir. Plus there was the remote chance he'd actually still have those kids he did originally, and if so they needed a mother. So I watched as he hooked up with Genko. Genma has always wanted to be filthy rich, never wanted to work for it, and his girl side had grown up and *thought* she was a girl. So it seemed a natural match-up."

BLEAAGGHH!

This was the sound of everyone, except Willow, vomiting.

"Genko is still obsessed about martial arts, and she does go on training trips, just this time without the seppuku pledge. So it shouldn't be too hard to snag her into taking our students just as we've done to her boy side." Willow said, lounging around comfortably, playing at being totally unconcerned about their reaction to this bit of news. "What does 'Man among men' mean, anyway?"

"It's a Japanese proverb," Doc wiped vomit off his chin. "It goes 'The flower of flowers is the cherry blossom - the samurai is the man among men.' Basically, what she was asking for was a cultured man with a broad range of skills. Genma, of course, delivered the opposite: a boy whose focus was so narrow he had virtually no ability to solve common, everyday cultural problems like simple, interpersonal relations, and had few if any skills outside of martial arts. But those cannot be considered Ranma's fault. They were entirely Genma's doing."

"Oh," Willow chirruped. "Well, on the plus side, Kodachi and Tatewaki were both born to their original mother, not to Genko or their original father."

OoOoO

"I have no idea what we could've done to the timestream that would have caused this," Doc declared, seeing Nodoka in a hospital bed, cuddling twins to her arms, the babies identical in all things save that one was a boy, and one was a girl, and the girl had tufts of red hair.

Nodoka gave a tired giggle. "That's not the usual reaction of men to becoming fathers. Here, now give your son and daughter a kiss. And I think your wife deserves one, too."

Bearing a big grin, Doc complied, kissing both Nodoka and her babies.

"What shall we call them?" Nodoka beamed down at her children in the way that only new mothers can.

OoOoO

"You married Ranma's mother?" came the shouts.

"Yes, and I am now Ranma's father, as well as his twin Ranko, and God willing there will be more on the way. That is what married couples do. I don't understand what is so hard to grasp about all of this." Doc was genuinely puzzled by their reactions to this bit of news.

"We just didn't expect you to get married," Xander stated dully.

"Especially not to a main character's mother," Willow was, for the moment, entirely too shocked to play around with cat mannerisms.

"Well, she had to marry *somebody!*" Doc declared. "As you know, part of our pay-off to Cologne for her participation was to arrange for some of these young girls to be trained among the amazons for a while, just to see if they'd like to join. You also know I was there myself accepting instruction both to overcome the faults Genma trained into my style, and to pick up the invaluable Hidden Weapons techniques. We were both sixteen at the time. We met, we fell in love, and married. How should any of this seem unusual?"

Xander got a thoughtful look to his face. But it was Willow who blurted out in concern. "I... I always thought eventually you'd go home and marry your Willow."

Doc smiled and gave her a hug, before declaring proudly. "You, my dear, are Willow. That other person is Rosenberg, because she is the only one who did those things that earned my lasting resentment. I can't go on blaming you for them."

Willow melted into the hug.

OoOoO

For a project they'd started just to get themselves training, this had certainly bloomed out of control. By their original contract with Cologne, her price for modifying one person's memory was them performing the same task as she required for shampooing three or ten people.

So, they'd chosen ten, figuring they'd find some use for those extra uses.

By choosing Genma, and looping him through time to create additional teachers, they'd figured to get themselves and a few of their favorite characters on the sidelines trained up to an acceptable standard before leaving this reality. But then it turned out, once they'd had everything arranged, Genma needed only five years to teach his students all he knew (or was willing to impart, anyway). That mean instead of training ten people for ten years each, they could arrange for him to teach twenty by the same trips they'd already paid for, if Cologne was willing to shampoo him just a few more times.

She was, if she could select some of those new students. There were some boys among her tribe that came from good stock and had natural talents for martial arts, they just knew no way to motivate them to learn, and Genma's training style was perfect for that. That man could have annoyed a saint into taking a swing at him.

Then, of course, there was that complication where Genma proved entirely unable to train girls effectively, and could have scarred Willow's psyche permanently if not for her costume. That was bad, since most of those they'd targeted for this teaching program were girls, and that man was patently unable, leading to Willow's act of revenge opening up that option again, from a slightly different angle.

Genma having a permanent and independent girl side meant they could put her under the same program, and turn out those female martial artists they'd been hoping for (Willow among them, who never stopped giggling over Genko being just as sexist in favor of girls, and the boy-side Genma was against them). But having two versions of Genma produce twenty martial arts students each meant their final total was forty C-List martial artists.

As Nodoka led her daughter and her friends in out of the rain, placing their umbrellas in the bucket-like stand meant for them, their entrance marked the first time all forty had been in one building, under one roof.

Cologne was there to greet them. As her final payoff for all of her help, she had received an eighteen centimeter mushroom, and now the former crone had recaptured her youth again, looking only slightly younger than Nodoka, who'd decided to take advantage of her favorite makeup in the world, and where other women only pretended not to get older, she would be fine spending the remainder of her life a healthy twenty-one.

Her husband did control the source of those mushrooms, after all. There was no point in not taking advantage of that. Actually, Doc had built an entire estate, on as grand a scale as the Kuno's, around the site of what remained of the Forest of Time, sheltering it against harm or accident. You just had to know what secret door led out to the right courtyard.

That, and the right passcodes to bypass all of the traps and autofiring miniguns.

Walking out into the main auditorium area of the rented hall, they were just in time to catch Doc stepping up to the podium. He proclaimed, "In this room are gathered the best practitioners of the Anything Goes School who now walk the Earth. In fact, in this room are currently gathered ALL practitioners of the Anything Goes style, save the founder himself, who is currently indisposed." He smiled, as though at a secret joke.

It wasn't a secret. Everybody laughed.

"We are all here roughly C-List martial artists," Doc declared, and received cheering. "The problem facing us, is that several times in the upcoming year a number of A-List martial artists are due to come and cause problems. Most of these are good enough that even several B-List martial artists teamed together are no threat to them. That is why I propose we hold a number of tournaments, honing our skills in hopes of increasing our general capabilities. Who knows? Maybe in this room, someone of our own number has the potential to reach A-List themselves!"

OoOoO

"So, what was all that about, Doc?" Xander asked once the meeting was over, but before the doctor went and excused himself to spend time with his family. "You sound like you are planning to stay a while."

"Why would I leave?" Doc spread his arms joyously. "Here I have love, family, children and friends. I have success both in finance and intellectual pursuits, but also in martial arts! Here I have everything I've ever wanted, but had always been denied! As far as I'm concerned this is as good as anything gets, why would I want to leave it behind?"

Xander and Willow's jaws fell open.

"Have fun," Doc lifted Xander's hand then dropped the time vehicle keys in his open palm, before rushing off, "Don't forget to write!"

OoOoO

Xander was stunned speechless as they left the party, walking out to the garage. "I can't believe he won't leave!"

Xander slumped down into the driver's seat, staring at the slider button.

Willow instead reached for the time controls.

"What?" Xander, freaked out already, assumed, "You're going to go back and make it so he changes his mind?"

"No." Willow typed in a number ten years in the future. "We're going to make sure he gets his happy ending. And, if not, warn him about it."

OoOoO

"Local Physicist Killed by Chinese Warlord?" Doc clutched his hair in distress as he read the headline on a newspaper the teens had brought back with them. He checked the date, before reading more. "Why, that's this year! Only five months from now! Let's see."

Doc collapsed into an armchair moments later, staring up at his two time traveling friends. "Great Scott! From what this says it sounds like Herb of the Musk appears with thirty of his warriors and levels the place." He began to page through the paper, reading, "it says here, many of us were killed, our women and children carried off... this is a first-rate disaster! What have we done that could've caused this? Prince Herb wasn't nearly so violent in the series!"

"I dunno, Doc," Xander offered, feeling helpless.

But Doc wasn't listening, his eyes fixed on the mantelpiece. "Great Scott," he exclaimed, standing up to reverently cross over the room to where the Locking Ladle and Unlocking Kettle stood on display. "This! These are the answer! How could I have been so careless? After Willow brought back the ladle I just went after the kettle to have a matching set! They have been on display here in my living room for years! Hundreds of people have seen them as I've invited guests to the mansion! What are we going to do?"

"Couldn't you just get rid of them?" Xander offered, while Willow stood by silent.

Doc was already shaking his head. "This would still be the last place these items had been seen, and therefore the natural place to start a search for them. And before you ask, merely returning the items would not be enough. If that worked, it would've saved us the first time. I'm sure I would have offered. The items don't mean all that much to me."

"Couldn't you just replace them with fakes?" Xander asked.

Doc weakly shook his head. "Remember, we live here. It would be no use replacing them in the past, because any fakes convincing enough to have fooled us would also have drawn whatever attention brought us to his notice in the first place. And replacing them now would still leave us as the last point of contact on his search for them."

Doc got up and started pacing around, like a haunted man. "And if our tournament worked to produce an A-List fighter, we would not have been destroyed in the first place. I guess the controlled environment of an organized competition is just not motivating enough to turn any of us into that good a fighter in so short a space of time."

His pacing came to a halt as Willow dangled a set of keys before his eyes.

"Have you worked out where we're going, Doc?" Willow asked gently.

Doc stood silent for a long time, before he smiled back at her. "Well, it looks like we are back to the original mission: canvas the multiverse searching for a cure for our problems."

He grabbed a suitcase and began to pack, although in his inattention nothing went in the case, he just kept stuffing the items into the sleeves of his robes, storing them in Hidden Weapon space. "We can treat the whole thing as a training journey. Exposure to new situations and high amounts of stress are the best ways to train in Anything Goes. My fear is, if we go back to what we were doing, picking up where we left off and just taking a minor adjustment to our last coordinates, we'd end up in another machine-haunted apocalyptic future much like the Matrix and Terminator worlds, and while that wouldn't be the problem it once was, thanks to our newfound abilities, it doesn't get us any closer to where we want to be. So, I did some thinking. We like this Ranma universe rather a lot. So, what would happen if I were to take the mathematical value of the last place we were, that Matrix world, and averaged them with the stats for here? What do you think? Do you feel like trying it?"

Nodoka poked her head into the room. "A training trip?"

The woman was shoved aside by her two oldest children bursting in. "Hurray!"

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Home is where the heart is. And Doc had already confessed he didn't have many (or any) good memories of his birth dimension.

So why wouldn't he go native? 


	8. Chapter 8

Eighty Eight Miles Per Hour  
Chapter Eight

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Lionheart  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Just like trip to Toma's island, in what was now an alternate future before they'd gone back to alter the past, once word spread of the journey everyone wanted to come. Kimiko was on deck cooking with her daughters (Akane's curse of being deadly bad with anything she cooked seemed to have been lifted at the same time as she'd lost her inability to swim or perform martial arts adequately). The Golden Pair of martial arts figure skating, two of those extra characters Doc and his family had seen fit to train, were performing on the ice rink, while Kodachi and her brothers were giving performances of their specialties.

The whole Anything Goes Tribe seemed to be there.

Actually, it was more than the Anything Goes Tribe, as certain people had snuck on board that Doc was sure he didn't recognize. Even outfitted with as large a trailer as they could tow, the car had been inadequate. Even a BUS wouldn't work! So, they'd gone for broke and arranged for an ocean liner, even going back in time to have one built to their specifications, so that it could handle both the crowds, and the necessary speeds.

It was probably the only time traveling cruise ship imagined since somebody stopped filming Fantasy Island, but it was the only way to get all of the capacity they needed once people started inviting themselves along.

Xander, for once *not* standing out in his favored attire of Hawaiian print shirt and Bermuda shorts, sidled up with a chilled fruit drink in one hand, snagged off one of the wait staff's tray. "Doc, why do you put up with this? We coulda been gone before most of these people knew it. You, me and Willow in the car, plus your wife and oldest kids if you'd wanted. Why go out of your way to accommodate all of these crowds?"

Doc was actually beaming as he took in the large group. "That's a very good question, but I think I can give you a simple answer. Who do you see here?"

Xander glanced around. Half these folks he didn't recognize. "Everybody!"

Willow cocked her head insightfully, and corrected, "Everyone your children might marry."

"EXACTLY!" Doc pounced on the redhead's answer, proud of her. "We're going to be gone for a long time, perhaps years. In the case of this stop it was even decades. I could miss my family all that time, or I could bring them along."

Willow's eyes seized upon Ranma and Ranko teaming up against the Golden Pair of martial arts figure skating, and losing handily. The Golden Pair had always fought at a full level higher on ice. It was their specialized environment. That wasn't so bad when without that boost they'd been merely D-List annoyances. Now they were solid Cs all around, that made them fully B-List while figure skating. So they were wiping the ice with all challengers.

"But if you bring them along, those years will still pass," Willow concluded. "Children grow up, and when they do they will do their best to find spouses and have families of their own." The redhead transferred her gaze to her demented, oldest friend, having perceived his thought processes back when he'd ordered this ship built. "If they found those mates among the natives of whatever universe we visited, they'd be tempted to stay with their spouses on those worlds, just as you've gone native here. Your family could potentially break up, with members spread all across the multiverse, settled on whatever worlds they found people to marry on. So, to protect them from being lost to you forever, you brought along a selection for them to choose from, from among the natives of this world."

"Precisely," Doc nodded seriously, before folding his arms and turning back to face the action. "Of course, the *official* excuse is so they have properly skilled opponents to practice against, to keep their own skills up. We can even hold our tournament as we travel."

Willow gave a soft smile. "Yes, parental meddling in love lives is almost never taken well."

Doc shrugged. "Meddling? Or just making sure that not all the options they have to choose from are bad?"

"Wouldn't it just be easier to leave everybody behind?" Xander felt puzzled.

"Yes," Willow grinned, eyes still on Doc, reading him. "But he's never been happy before, and he's trying to prolong it by bringing his family along."

Xander scratched his head. "Hasn't he already spent huge blocks of time away from them before? I mean, I know all his kids have been on those training trips."

Doc actually chuckled. "No. Those didn't part us. Why do you think I wanted the complete set of Locking Ladle and Unlocking Kettle in the first place? Willow pioneered a good idea. When it came time for my children to get trained under Genma we dosed them with a use of Instant Jusenkyo powder from the Spring of Drowned Twins, using the Locking Ladle. One copy stayed with us to get the best scholastic education money could buy, while the other went on the training trip to learn martial arts. Then, when the trip was over, we used the Unlocking Kettle to break the curse and combine the artificial twins into one. Since Instant Jusenkyo powder only works for a single transformation, there were no lasting effects, other than Nodoka and I never missing a birthday, and having full access to raise our kids, despite their training journeys."

Xander's eyes sought out the redhaired Ranko and her brother, dancing on ice. "So..."

"In this timeline, Ranma and Ranko were born natural twins. There was no curse involved. Don't ask me how that happened," Doc scolded mildly. "I don't understand everything. But yes, for a few years there were four of them, two Ranmas and two Rankos. One of each with us, building family bonds and receiving an education, and one of each off being taught as dedicated martial artists. They don't look much different from the series, but those kids are geniuses in more than just martial arts. Ranma had his first doctorate at twelve."

"I wonder why." Willow smirked slyly at their male parent, openly speculating to those who knew her what a genius like Doc would contribute to the intelligence of his offspring.

With Genma being an idiot, replacing that part of their genes with the genius who was Doc could only do them good in the intelligence department.

For his part, Xander had gotten distracted, his eyes unfocused watching Ranko out on the ice. Just like in the series, that girl could be the most extreme tomboy one moment, then just as extremely girly the next. And, right now, all dressed up for figure skating, it was girly.

And so attractive she made Buffy look like a blonde gorilla.

Doc, noticing this attention, chided softly, "Don't forget, you and I are alternate forms of the same person. Genetically identical. So, biologically speaking, you are that girl's father."

Willow burst out in laughter, while Xander looked bummed.

Doc chuckled. "The ironic part about Ranko's upbringing was that it was the copy of her that stayed with us that grew up as the tomboy. It was the harsh living of a martial artist on a long training journey that awoke her feminine side, yearning after all the comforts and pretty things she couldn't have in that lifestyle made her appreciate them. So she dove into indulging her femininity at every opportunity she could get. Now her two backgrounds are blended, I find she switches back and forth as convenient to her circumstances."

In order to change the subject, Xander leaned close to whisper, "What about that lecture you gave us when we first got here about not spouting off that we've got a... certain type of device others might want?"

He tapped the ship pointedly with one toe.

Doc gave him a knowing grin before directing a smile towards weird-looking and entirely fake 'magic' artifacts built into the front, back, top and side of the boat. "Oh, well, so long as it is in their best interests to cooperate, I don't see why anyone should want to steal the 'Doors of Janus'."

Actually, the real time circuit and flux capacitor weren't part of the boat. Neither was the slider device. Those were built into a baby's training potty that Doc carried in Hidden Weapons space, and that he could plug into special ports on the ship at need (the main one being in his cabin). The reason it was disguised as a training potty was so that everyone would overlook it, even if they somehow managed to search inside his chi-folded space.

He didn't care that, with those fake magic artifacts in place, people thought the ship could travel to places no one else could go. They thought that was some type of magic.

He'd even named the ship 'Gulliver's Travels'.

And the trio had already resigned themselves that it would probably get destroyed. But if that was the case, they'd just resume their journey without attempting to bring all of Nerima along. Doc was a scientist. He did experiments. Sometimes experiments didn't work out. If this one didn't, they could simply revert back to the pattern for hops they'd used before.

Down in the hold, packed in shock-resistant material, was their current time traveling car, and enough knockout drugs to sedate the entire passenger list and crew so they could be given a lift home one carload at a time, should that become necessary.

Every one of the three of them was privately convinced it would be.

Doc didn't have to bring his family along. Using time travel they never had to know he was gone. He just wanted to. Like Willow said, he'd never been this happy, and wanted to keep that sensation with him, if possible.

Then it snowballed, bringing potential spouses so as they grew up his children would have a selection that would not involve leaving them behind in some distant reality. And well, things had gotten enough out of hand that this trip was probably doomed to failure. But at least they would've tried.

Doc could content himself with that.

OoOoO

In some ways they got lucky.

A fight broke out and the ship got sunk even before they left the harbor.

So much for that experiment.

But at least this way Doc could content himself that his family were safe, even if they weren't present (for certain values of safe, naturally, as there was still the Musk threat).

OoOoO

The car nosed carefully out of the dimension sliding portal, occupants on edge and nervous, expecting an attack at any moment.

Rather than hostile, this Earth seemed idyllic, an uninhabited wonderland. Not what one would have expected to see appearing off the shore of a place as populated as Japan.

"Well, this is a surprise." Xander blinked.

"Meow. Not what I expected at all. Purr."

"You know what this says to me?" Nodoka clapped her hands. "A picnic!"

OoOoO

"You know, I've heard of bugs at picnics, but this is ridiculous." Willow quipped, looking up at the eight foot tall, insect-like machine that had just landed at their outdoor meal.

Xander looked up from where he had been tending to the grill. "That's an Invid scout," he recognized from a favored TV show, then grew horrified at the implications.

Doc and Nodoka's heads popped up out of some distant bushes, which they immediately disappeared back down into so they could clothe themselves.

It was too late.

The scout mecha that had landed at their picnic tried to grab Willow. But, being as good a martial artist as she was, this was an exercise in futility. She and Xander counterattacked while Doc and his wife were hurriedly getting dressed, but as the thing was effectively made out of tank armor, their efforts were fruitless.

The real danger they didn't realize until Doc and his wife came bursting out of the bushes to declare, "They're after anything mechanical they can find!"

Xander and Willow turned in horror to behold two other scout mecha flying away with their time vehicle held between them. Their distraction lasted just long enough for the scout that had landed among their picnic to grab their barbecue grill and fly away with it.

Doc immediately made notes of the angle and trajectory of their course.

OoOoO

"Emmett Dear, are you familiar with this world?"

Nodoka's question came as they were hiking across a mountain, on their way to follow the course taken by the Invid scouts who'd stolen their time machine.

"Yes. It was a popular television program when I was growing up. Jesse and I watched every episode we could." Doc posed on a ridgetop with a walking stick. Thanks to Hidden Weapons style, at least none of them were lacking for basic camping supplies, minus one barbecue grill, of course. "The basic plot starts in the year nineteen ninety nine when a giant alien spacecraft crash lands upon the Earth. Astounded by the technology in the vessel, this event snaps the planet out of the global war they'd been having at the time to investigate and repair the wreck. Then, ten years later, an alien armada comes to reclaim the ship on the very day of its launching ceremony. A number of fights follow, until the alien fleet calls in an armada so huge that it destroys ninety-eight point seven percent of the Earth's population in a bombardment that lasts only a handful of seconds. Earth defeats the invaders, but it is at best a pyrrhic victory, with even our rebuilt space battleship all but destroyed. Then you get a major timeline split. In one version, called Macross, certain things happen that don't concern us here, because we are in the other major arm. In this history, the masters of the cloned battle fleet show up, still searching for that wrecked starship. Again we defeat them, and again it hurts badly. But in the fighting the last vestiges of our crashed battlefortress are cracked open, releasing the seeds to an alien plant that were what both armadas were really after in the first place. Unlike virtually all other planets in the universe, those plants can grow here, and when their seeds are released and take root, the mystic energy they provide calls the last of three alien invasion forces - the race the first two had stolen those seeds from in the first place. That race, called the Invid, show up in force when the humans are still very weak from the last invasion, and not particularly caring this planet already had a population, wipe out what remained of human civilization in order to take over the Earth as their new garden spot. Then they devote themselves to bringing in new crops of those plants."

"So why did they steal our car and barbecue grill?" Nodoka pressed.

Doc sighed, resuming their march. "Very simply, the Invid do not understand technology. All of their equipment is made using a pseudo-magical process, requiring the energy of those special plants. So, as something of a hobby now that they are here, the Invid study human machines. They can't really tell the difference between a main battle tank or a toaster, unless one or the other is firing on them, but they like to collect and take apart things all the same - a fact that plagues the efforts of human survivors to rebuild some measure of civilization. But in the end, it all gets more or less resolved by returning human space fleets who evict the aliens one last time, and of course devastate the Earth once more in the process."

Doc gave a tired smile, admitting, "That's not something I'm anxious to stick around for."

"Are you worried they may have taken apart our car by now?" Willow asked.

Doc shrugged. "It's possible, of course. But I can't run at eighty-eight miles per hour. So we have to get a vehicle of some kind, so we can have something for me to install the training potty unit into. And the best, maybe the only, place to find a functional vehicle would be the stockpiles of human machines these Invid have collected in their hives."

"Couldn't we just use the slider unit to get out of here?" Xander asked.

"We could," Doc agreed. "But that would leave a functioning time machine in the hands of these aliens, and I am a little worried that, despite all the odds, they might get some human collaborator or traitor to tell them enough about how a car works they could trigger a time or a dimension warp by accident. Because if anyone could figure out how to duplicate those effects just by watching them happen, it would be the Invid, who do all of their real work with direct energy manipulation. Since I don't want to let these guys loose on the multiverse, I'd rather not leave them with our time vehicle."

That was so serious a thought, nobody said anything more for over an hour.

"We couldn't beat the one at the camp. How are we going to defeat a hive full of them?" Xander asked at length.

Doc sighed, opening out his bedroll. "We can't. At least not the way we are. In the morning, we'll all start training in the Breaking Point."

"The what?" both Willow and Nodoka asked together.

"A technique taught by the Chinese Amazons by which a martial artist can make inanimate objects explode with just a touch," Doc explained, laying down. "It seems to be restricted to rigid, mineral based targets, but in the series it was one of Ryoga's signature techniques. At one point he uses it on a vending machine, and several other times he detonates walls or roof shingles or other manmade things. Because it doesn't work on living targets directly, mostly Ryoga uses it to create clouds of smoke and shrapnel during fights. But since the problem we had fighting that Invid scout was not being able to hurt the machine-like body it wore, this could even the odds considerably. If not, we'll try another secret technique. I've brought a number. This *was* supposed to a training journey, after all."

They went to sleep with the sphere of an Invid hive visible on stilts in the distance.

OoOoO

Next morning, stomachs growling, Willow declared, "I can't believe nobody thought to pack any food."

"It was in the car, because it doesn't respond well to Hidden Weapon techniques," Doc answered soberly, his own stomach growling. "Besides, we started out this trip on a luxury cruise liner."

"That didn't make it out of the harbor," Nodoka sighed.

"Alright," Xander declared. "That's it. When this is over, and we go back to your dimension, I'm going back in time to train alongside her and pick up some of Ukyo's cooking techniques!"

"None of the martial arts cooks are top-ranked in battle," Doc discouraged.

"No, but I bet none of them go hungry, either," Xander countered.

They all spent a moment thinking about that, deciding in unison, ~No, they probably don't.~

Everybody privately resolved to pick up a cooking style as a side-school in that instant, as all of them seemed to be able to store ridiculous quantities of ingredients in stuff-space, and even turn that into edible confections in a matter of seconds. Ukyo could also use a welder's mask and torch to weld herself a griddle to cook on in between blows during a fight!

No, that idea was sounding better all of the time.

Sooner rather than later, though, they were all gathered around a clearing where Xander hung suspended, tied up in an elaborate style so that only one arm could move freely, and on that his fist was tied so that only one finger protruded.

Everyone winced as he got smashed by a boulder, a spherical stone that was as large around as the boy was tall, suspended by ropes, that had been swung like a pendulum to crash into the also suspended boy.

"Xander!" Doc scolded, leaping to the top of the rock that had just hit the boy before quoting Cologne, "How many times do I have to tell you to look for the Breaking Point with your mind, not your eyes? Listen to me, if you can't master this, the simplest of techniques, then you will lose when we go into that hive!"

Xander got smacked by the rock again, and again, and again, each time striking it first with his finger, trying to get it to explode, but so far each time without success.

As he hung limply from his harness, Doc excused the group to go a short distance off into the forest, where he confessed, "Breaking Point is only one technique we're going to need if we go in there. While I am confident that we can use it to destroy Invid mecha, that covers only offense. We're going to need defense, too. Some of those, I might as well call them machines, even though they aren't really, shoot disks of plasma energy as an attack. In fact, they can strafe an area with them, spraying plasma disks as if from machineguns. We get hit by one of those, it's probably over."

"So what can we do?" Nodoka asked in concern.

Doc pointed to a nearby tree, one bearing multiple bee hives. "So we train to avoid them. If they can't hit you, they can't hurt you. Since we don't have any machineguns with us, and it probably wouldn't be wise to shoot them at each other anyway, we'll have to train how to dodge using a different method."

Doc put on a beekeeper's outfit and grabbed a pole. "Since the essence of how to dodge is speed, we've got to train up how fast we are!"

He knocked one of the beehives towards Willow, whose eyes grew round in horror as he declared, "If you can dodge the swarm long enough to knock out all of the bees before they sting you, you should be fast enough to evade the Invid!"

The cat burglar exploded into motion.

As the swarm departed her crumpled body moments later, Willow looked up with a stung and swollen face to level a glare at Doc.

He shrugged. "We all have to train in both techniques, so I'll give you your choice. Would you rather tie me up to be beaten by a boulder over and over, or would you like to knock the next swarm of bees onto me?"

OoOoO

"You could have told us in the series Ranma used the blinding speed of the Chestnut Fist in order to help knock out those bees, Dear," Nodoka warned with a sting-swollen face.

Doc sighed, rubbing at the bruises of his rock-pummeled face as he tended the cooking fire, having caught a couple of rabbits earlier on. "In the series, Ranma was under the mistaken impression that if Ryoga touched him with the Breaking Point, he would explode. So he used the advanced speed of the Chestnut Fist to block and parry as much as anything. Since we can't do that against disks of plasma, we have to focus on full-body speed and avoidance. So it would actually be bad for our training, in this instance, to learn the Chestnuts Roasting Over An Open Fire technique first."

Behind them, Xander got loose from his training harness and fell out of the tree on his head, so badly beaten he was already unconscious and didn't even notice.

"We've got a long way to go," Willow mourned, treating her bee stings.

OoOoO

The next day the girls got stung less, and the boys were able to drive their fingers a knuckle deep into their respective boulders before getting hit. But obviously that was not enough. It took six days working from dawn to dusk before they made their respective breakthroughs, girls dodging every bee until they could swat down entire swarms without getting stung once, and the boys shattering their boulders with a touch.

And then, of course, it was only time to start over again, this time trading places so the boys went after speed training, dodging bees, while the girls got pummeled by boulders.

Nobody was particularly happy about taking all of that punishment and only being halfway there to being ready to face the Invid hive and reclaim their vehicle, but at least by then they'd proven both techniques possible, and the end was in sight.

OoOoO

They were ready. All four of them had mastered both techniques, and they celebrated by blowing apart the base of one of the stilts supporting the Invid hive.

"I've just now thought of a problem with our training," Xander confessed, as they watched a swarm of hundreds of Invid depart the hive and head their way.

"What is that?" Doc looked his way in confusion, not altering his battle-ready stance.

Xander freaked out, pointing upwards. "All of the Invid FLY! How are we going to defeat them if we can't reach that high to touch them with the Breaking Point?"

General terror followed that announcement, and the four martial artists scattered as the Invid got within range to start strafing their positions. It was one thing to be receiving fire if you could strike back, and quite another to be helpless to reply to a barrage.

Against Invid shooting at them from thousands of feet up, they were helpless.

Soon Willow had found a cave, and all of them piled in, going to ground to try to hide. They put some distance between them and the entrance, since it was plenty big enough for the Invid to enter, but as they sought cover they found that their cave just kept getting deeper and deeper, until finally it disgorged them into a huge underground cavern.

"An Invid Genesis Pit." Xander and Doc breathed aloud in awe.

"A what?" Nodoka asked in concern.

Doc folded his arms. "A giant, underground, biology laboratory, spread out over a system of huge caverns spanning a radius of a dozen miles or so, and divided into sections. Each section has its own natural-seeming environment, and is devoted to its own major branch of the ongoing experiments, where the aliens play around with the stuff of life on this world and try variations in order to figure out what makes us tick. All of it will be run by its own research hive of Invid, hidden somewhere down in here."

"So, a bunch of caves filled with mutant monsters," Xander summarized.

"Something tells me our situation has not improved," Willow sighed.

"Well, Doc announced soberly. "We can't go back out the way we came in. Those Invid will be on the watch for us there for weeks, and we haven't got enough food to wait them out. So I believe we should start searching for another exit."

OoOoO

"Somehow having a picnic always invites BUGS!" Xander snapped the thorax of a giant mosquito larger than he was.

Nodoka slipped through the grasps of a platoon of giant army ants, slicing apart heads from bodies with each smooth motion of her body, katana gleaming in the light, "Somehow I always thought a katana too dignified for swatting ants before. I've changed my mind now. These are the size of horses!"

"Weren't ants that large in an old movie?" Willow gracefully sidestepped a diving attack from a fly, and leapt over the acid spray of a bombardier beetle as big as a VW bus.

"I believe it was titled THEM!" Doc gestured, sending out a spray of chains that tied up the fly before it could make another attack on Willow. Then he tried to shift his stance and was unable. Looking down he saw a glob of grey ooze, that following up, his gaze found was one of the anchors of a giant spider's web.

And said spider was hastily scrambling down after him.

He hit it in the face with his chained-up fly, then whipped out a sword.

OoOoO

"AAAaaHHHH!"

"I almost preferred the giant centipedes!" Willow declared as they all ran for their lives before a stampede of giant, herbivorous dinosaurs, smashing down trees in their path so there wasn't any perch to stand on safe from their advance.

Soon the stampede ran down to a lake. This wasn't a problem for the dinosaurs, as these herbivores preferred the water to land. But people don't swim as fast as they can run, and the martial artists now had to face a choice: face the tide of scaly flesh on land, where they could dodge better, or in water, where a crazy flipper hit from the storm of swimmers might knock them unconscious and be all she wrote.

With all of these dinosaurs, it would be like trying to stay afloat in a blender.

Even exhausted from their long run, the choice was obvious. They turned about and began to run uphill, through the charging mass of dinosaurs where they still had some ground under their feet.

The next seconds were among the most perilous of their lives as they leaped off the ground to the backs of rushing dinosaurs, then to the backs of other charging sauroids, with one slip meaning falling under that tide of mashing feet.

All four landed, breathless but okay, on the far side barely a minute later.

Just in time to stare up in shock and horror at the onrushing wall of teeth and claws that was the giant swarm of carnivorous dinosaurs that had caused the stampede of the herbivores!

OoOoO

"I've had ENOUGH of BEES!" Xander yelled, having been stung thousands of times just a few days ago, and carrying something of a grudge.

The entire group was riding on the backs of giant bees caught returning to their hive from equally giant flowers. Doc looked down at the territory they were traversing. "If you'd like to cross over this territory on foot, it looks like they've got King Kong and a few ape villages down there!" he shouted. "Should be fun for a party!"

"Oh look!" Nodoka pointed ahead. "I think they've got Gojira in the next section!"

Willow directed a playful look to Xander, who pouted, "Bees are fine."

OoOoO

"Something tells me if we found the right nutjob from Nerima, and dropped him in this place, that he'd invent a new martial art," Doc gazed around him at the giant beehive they were inside, walls of honeycomb rising as far as the eye could see on every side.

Bees the size of camels were also all over the place.

"I tapped one cell and got enough honey to last us all for a year," Xander announced as he staggered up, adjusting to the new weight in his robes, and proving he, too, had elected to learn the Hidden Weapons techniques during his stay training among the amazons. "That's even accounting for the fact that one martial artist eats like a hungry sports team."

Nodoka rolled in a section of pineapple as large around as a truck tire. "Well, I found some fruit outside. It looks like bugs aren't the only thing they grow well here. We could probably feed all of Japan just from this cave."

"You might be forced to use nukes to hunt the fish," Willow smugly brought in a minnow that was larger in body than she was. She posed leaning against it, purring all the while. "I caught sight of a trout out there that was larger than our former cruise liner. I think our dinosaur friends could well just be snack food, while this section was to keep Gojira and King Kong well fed."

Doc nodded. "In that case, we should not delay in finding another ride in an outgoing direction. Hold on a minute while I try to interpret this latest bee's dance. I think it might be going in a direction we'd find interesting."

OoOoO

Willow's eyes gleamed, catlike, from under a bush overlooking the Invid hive at the heart of this Genesis Pit. "If we could only get inside, I'm certain the corridors are narrow enough that we'd be in leaping distance of the Invid themselves, no matter what they tried. Meow."

Nodoka leaned over her shoulder and concurred. "Up on the surface we couldn't fight them because they flew too high, even this cavern is too large. But inside their hive they don't have enough room for that tactic. The dimensions just aren't right for it."

"Sooner the better," Xander declared, panting after just having put down a rabbit larger than most three family dwellings in Japan.

"Strangely, this place reminds me of Ryugenzawa," Doc proclaimed as a giant platypus larger than a ten-wheel delivery truck wandered by. "But I think you're right. We'd be safer on the inside facing Invid than fighting giant animals out here."

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Cross an anime with an apocalyptic future, and you get an anime with an apocalyptic future. Sounds fairly reasonable to me, doesn't it?

Of course, don't expect the filing system on universes to be that rational all of the time. 


	9. Chapter 9

Eighty Eight Miles Per Hour  
Chapter Nine

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Lionheart  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

Deep in the bowels of the caverns full of monsters that was the Invid Genesis Pit, outside one of the minor entrances to the Invid research hive that controlled the whole place, Doc came to a halt and began to whip out all sorts of scientific instruments and began to analyze the force field stretched across that entrance.

Willow regarded this with mild amusement, and, shortly after tossing a handful of gravel at it, then poking a stick through it, simply walked through the screen, then out again. "Doc," she smiled. "It's an environmental protection, not a security screen."

"Exactly!" Doc whispered excitedly while hurriedly making scribbled notes. "Do you have any idea of the commercial applications of such a device? Perfect protection against pests and ill weather, without hindering larger creatures at all? The residential market alone would be enormous! To say nothing of commercial farms or greenhouses!"

"Dear," Nodoka admonished, "We've got to get inside! Out here we're sitting ducks!"

"Yeah!" Xander blurted, before diving in the entrance himself. "Anyway, I thought you said their machines were pseudo-magical anyway?"

"Once an effect has been achieved, by whatever method, it is easier to recreate than invent from scratch. Mankind never needed the wings of a bird to fly, he only needed to look close enough at them!" Doc said excitedly. "I thought, with just a few readings, I might be able to duplicate this! Wait! I'm still not done..."

Doc looked heartbroken as Willow picked up his most crucial instrument, made a happy face at him, and simply backed into the hive, forcing him to follow if he wanted to keep access to the instrument doing most of his recordings.

Her smirk as she backed away with her prize also reawakened the strongest urge to reach for a Batarang he'd had in a very long time.

OoOoO

Nodoka bounced off the top of an Invid trooper's crablike shell and then dodged two swipes of its claws before the delayed effect of her Breaking Point strike caused it to explode.

Across the room, Xander had two scouts trying to strafe him with their plasma disks, but the ceiling was too low for them to be out of his jump range and, rebounding twice off of walls or unidentifiable bits of alien equipment built into the walls, he tapped and destroyed both of the attacking mecha.

"Fascinating!" Doc was totally absorbed in analyzing bits of the alien machinery.

Nodoka spun around, tapping two more soldiers as they entered the room, before calling out, "Darling? I think our situation requires us to keep moving."

"But I'm nearly there in figuring out how this works!" Doc cried out, tapping on one of his portable instruments.

"What is it?" Xander dodged behind a bank of machinery, causing it to explode as the new force of scouts opened fire on it.

"I could be mistaken, but I believe it controls water levels in the Pit!" Doc cried out in joy.

"WHAT?" both his companions yelled.

"We're dodging explosions while you study how the alien *plumbing* works?" Xander's voice sounded aggrieved, as he left his disintegrating cover, leaped high to touch down on one scout, then bounced off it to another as his Breaking Point caused the first to explode into shards of metal and purple goo behind him. "That's it. We're moving on."

"I believe your counterpart has the right of it, Dearest," Nodoka scolded, tapping a wall so the smoke and shards of the explosion obscured her as she ran up and tapped two new scouts that had been trying to get into the room. "Come along."

"But..." Doc ducked just in time as a volley of plasma disks came from behind him and obliterated the machinery he'd been analyzing.

"Fine!"

OoOoO

An Invid hive would seem an astonishing fortress to most. Entrances irised open or shut at the will of the Invid. Gravity reversed itself in vertical tunnels at their command. Strange and incomprehensible devices that were neither living nor machine were everywhere.

*BOOM!*

As were, of course, the Invid, who responded to the invasion of their hive in hundreds.

"Good thing they can only come at us a couple at a time, huh?" Xander called out to his friends as he took shelter in one crater blown in the side of a narrow tunnel only a few dozen feet across.

"It's not luck!" Doc called out to him, leaping out of his own cover to touch the Invid scout that had tried to brave the human's cover in a rush, causing the mecha to explode and leave only rubble and purple gunk behind. "In the narrow confines of a corridor like this, they are unable to use their superior numbers. That's why I chose it as shelter when a large swarm began to rush us!"

Doc hurriedly dove for cover again as a rain of plasma disks commenced, blowing more holes and damaging the fortress further. "Of course," Doc called out from where he was hugging the floor, "I thought they'd be a little more reluctant to cause damage to their own hive!"

"What I want to know is, where is Willow?" Nodoka replied. "And why does the Breaking Point work on the Invid if they are alive?"

"Imagine if you will," Doc called out from where he was hugging the floor under a barrage of plasma disks, "A car. Say that this particular vehicle has somehow been outfitted for use by a person who is quadriplegic. Then say that, like Darth Vader's armor, that car contains life support so that the person inside can live, but that without that special support he will die. Now give that car the ability to fly, and arms and legs in place of wheels, shrink it to eliminate all passenger and cargo space, and that 'car' we have imagined up, is what most people think of when they think 'Invid'. They only see the vehicle, because the aliens never leave them. They don't think of the creature inside, because it is trapped there, like a biological brain of the mecha they wear. All we are doing is blowing up those alien powersuits. They are the ones who cannot live without them."

"I don't think the shrapnel as those suits explodes helps them any," Xander quipped from his side, having only just detonated an enemy soldier that was peering inside.

"So where is Willow?" Nodoka asked, repeating herself now that one question had been thoroughly answered.

"No idea. I think we got separated shortly after we entered the hive," Doc replied. "With all of the alien architecture, it sure is easy to get lost in here."

Outside of the corridor, a man-sized Invid enforcer mecha gestured to several workers. Then the trio of humans within the hall screamed aloud in alarm as the section of pipe-like corridor they'd been sheltering in was torn free of its mountings by Invid workers laboring behind the walls, and their section got flung into the air, where dozens of Invid soldiers then began to open fire upon it.

The torn apart section of corridor disintegrated under the hail of plasma blasts, and the three humans had only just jumped clear in time.

"They're intelligent. Got to give them that!" Doc shouted as the trio of dimension travelers bounced and rebounded off walls, or the Invid themselves, as they used Breaking Points indiscriminately upon everything they touched, both clouding the room with debris, and shattering the hulls of Invid troopers, who were now spraying plasma so liberally they were endangering themselves and other Invid.

Privately, as they dodged repeated plasma fire, all three humans were thinking their training with the bees might not have been extreme enough. This was something of a switch from an hour ago, when all of them had been convinced it had been needlessly excessive.

OoOoO

The ceiling had collapsed and they were lucky to get into another room.

Xander was sprawled over something he would be horrified to learn was an Invid medical table that was automatically analyzing him as though he were Invid, finding a disturbing lack of slug-like features to him, and feverishly working its little alien brain on how to remedy that, while Nodoka and Doc were panting, leaned up against each other in a corner.

"So, was that a fight, or what?" Xander panted the moment he had breath back, rolling over to face the duo, and unknowingly frustrating the little medical table he was on as he rolled right out of the way of the probe it had just tried to raise up to sample him.

Doc gave him a tired grin. "I believe we can classify that as a fight, yes." He reached up to finger where his hair had caught fire out of a near miss with a plasma blast, one that had very nearly taken off his head, and ended up only setting his hair on fire. Right now he had only a white fringe around the back and sides. The top was entirely gone, or blackened to ash.

Nodoka was fingering where one sleeve of her kimono was gone.

"Oh!" Xander sat up and stretched, inadvertently dodging another probe, which withdrew after the attempt. He lay back down. "Wow! After this, vampires will be easy."

"I don't think vampires will explode with a touch." Doc was fingering the ends of his burnt-off hair. "The bodies are dead, yes. But they are inhabited by a blood demon. I don't know how that changes things, if the Breaking Point applies or not."

"Well," Xander rolled into a reverse back flip, dismounting the table with a flourish, and this time unknowingly evading a set of grasping claws it had extruded. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready for another run!"

"First, we had better find Willow," Nodoka stood along with her husband.

"No need." Willow's voice came so cheerful into the room that Doc experienced a sudden stab of wanting to check Gotham Museum to see what cat statues were missing this time.

Instead, Willow entered the room, dressed in armor and walking a rather bulky motorcycle.

"Oh, wow! A Cyclone!" Xander fell into pure comic geek bliss as he rushed over to examine the Robotech motorcycle from every angle.

Nodoka found herself looking around the room for strange wind patterns. "What is he talking about, Dear?" she asked her husband.

He leaned over to confide, "That motorcycle is a transformable vehicle that can be as you see it one moment, then a suit of powered battle armor the next. It is a fairly nimble little machine. Lightly armed, but rather durable. They are called Cyclones. To transform, a suit of matching non-powered armor like Willow is now wearing is required. Otherwise the bigger set has none of the proper anchor points to latch onto."

Nodoka blinked for several moments as Xander ranted about the vehicle, before leaning close to her husband to ask, "And why is this so important to him?"

Doc gave a familial shrug, whispering back, "They were something he saw on television when we were kids. Imagine if you had a chance to see or handle something you'd seen on TV when you were that age."

Understanding now, Nodoka gave her nod of approval.

They'd been quiet, but Willow's ears had caught this whispered conversation anyway, and she gave a catlike grin, "Oh, in this situation it's rather more than that. The power cell on these things are robust, roughly equivalent to a nuclear plant for a short burst. And the bike can go fast enough to reach eighty eight miles per hour."

This instantly had riveted Doc's interest. "Was there anything else where you found this?"

Willow gave a casual shrug, affecting a catlike disinterest even as she toyed with him. "Only a few mounds of earth equipment. Most of it was pretty busted up, either damaged when they captured it, or by the Invid dissecting it later. But I found a bunch of repair manuals, and..."

Willow was shocked to find the proffered tablet computer already snatched out of her grasp by Doc, who shouted, "Amazon Speed Reading technique!" and began flipping through the displays at an astonishing rate.

"Amazon Speed Reading technique?" Both Willow and Xander asked together.

"Not only reading, but memorization." Doc replied, eyes still following the blur of displays his busy fingers kept summoning. "The moment I learned they had it, I would have given a kidney for it. Using this technique allows me to memorize large blocks of data in a short period of time. Since our memories are unchanged by alterations to the time stream, this method allows me to retain information, like technological development our meddling would otherwise erase! So, if I'd had this back on that Terminator world, I could have retained plans for their laser weaponry, vehicles and robots effortlessly, despite that future being erased!"

"Pooh," Willow pouted, placing her hands on her hips and cocking them sexily, probably without even being aware she was doing it. "Here I thought I'd been saving the big surprise for last."

"Oh?" Xander gave her his attention, even while Doc was still absorbed in memorizing every page and diagram in the little computer reference manual. Humoring her, he asked, "So what was the big surprise? Did you find our time vehicle?"

Willow gave a little frown over not having Doc's attention, but decided that having Nodoka and Xander's was enough. "Sadly, no. I am guessing they took that one to the hive we first saw, the one standing on stilts on the surface, not this deep underground hive."

"Then what did you find?"

"Oh, only an Alpha fighter." She mentioned playfully.

The effect on Xander was electric. "An Alpha fighter? Really?"

Watching her oldest friend bouncing in the air in glee like a little kid just finding that it was Christmas satisfied whatever Willow had been looking for, and she nodded. "Yes, really."

"Wow!" Xander popped through a complete flip before pumping a fist in the air. "What are we waiting for? Let's go get it!"

Now Willow frowned. She'd been hoping Doc would have an answer for this part, as she didn't want to let her friend down. "Unfortunately, they've already taken apart big chunks of it, and they weren't gentle. This was not 'taking out some screws' kind of disassembly, it was more of a 'cutting open a frog' type. I was hoping we could get Doc up there to fix it, or else we'll never get it out of here."

Doc was suddenly there before them both, holding out the display screen with two images on it, "Did the Alpha fighter look like this? Or this?"

On the screen were two pictures of slightly different jet fighters. Willow tapped one. Doc immediately went mental, grasping his hair and spinning about. "A Shadow Fighter! We've got to get it! Nothing about their special cloaking device is included in this repair manual!"

"Cloaking device?" All three others echoed.

"Yes!" Doc agreed intently, holding out the tablet saying data on those was not included, as the person to whom this computer was first issued did not have the clearance to work on them. "I know what you're thinking, and it's not that. Unlike just about every other kind of cloaking device that ever existed in science fiction, this does not make anything invisible. It just conceals the vehicle from all kinds of mechanical sensors, including the special energy sensors of the Invid. Still, that ability is priceless! We've got to come back for it!"

"Come back?" all other voices echoed.

"Yes." Doc was suddenly normalized. He waved his arms in a 'Don't you see?' gesture. "Repairs on something like that to get it out of here could take weeks, and that is if it was a fairly light amount of damage. To have that amount of time, we'd be forced to kill all of the Invid in this hive! And, should we manage something like that, we'd be better off doing our study of the cloaking device here, where we had ready access to food and supplies! No. Our only hope of getting the time we need to get that fighter out of here is to either get hold of it before it got damaged, or come back with overwhelming numbers, and both of those courses of action require our time machine - which is something we dare not use this close to the Invid, for fear of their scanners detecting or duplicating the energy pattern. So we must leave in order to get sufficient distance to use our tools properly."

They all looked towards the one Cyclone.

"Can one motorcycle hold us all?" Nodoka asked dubiously, as she didn't see how.

"We're more agile than most Chinese acrobats. Of course we'll fit, even if we have to form a human pyramid on top of it while accelerating to eighty eight miles per hour," Doc assured her in flat, matter of fact, tones. "Now let's get out of here."

"Exit's this way," Willow waved toward a corridor.

OoOoO

"You'd think they'd think up something better to say than 'Surrender humans, this is your last chance'." Xander mocked the large group of Invid enforcers who'd been guarding the exit, but were currently getting kicked around by those same humans they were commanding to surrender. "'Please don't hurt us' could be a better choice."

Unlike virtually all other Invid, this particular brand of aliens were actually advanced enough to survive without their artificial metal shells - until the martial artists punched or kicked or threw them into walls or otherwise finished them off, of course.

"It's not really words. It's a telepathic imperative that is being broadcast," Doc advised. "It's just your brain finds it easier to interpret that as words."

He then yanked one Invid enforcer into the path of the energy beam of a second, using the first as shield, then charging the second as the first enforcer blew up from its ally's blast.

Nodoka's sword slashed in half two of the Invid who'd lost their body armor, then she kicked another still in its suit, which immediately began to crack around the contact point, then exploded.

"Using the Breaking Point with your feet. Handy," Willow surmised as she tied up another Invid with her makeshift whip.

"The hard part is really detecting the point," the proper Japanese woman advised, brushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "Forcing chi in to detonate it is the easy one."

"You know, something just struck me," Xander announced, as he was bashing apart the head of an Invid using the arm shield that alien had dropped.

"What's that?" Willow inquired, casually breaking the neck of the last of this bunch of aliens.

Xander pointed to one of the rock walls of the Invid Genesis Pit. "Ryoga uses this technique to tunnel all of the time, in the show. We don't have to find an entrance. We can make one! Just point us at any old rock wall and we can blast ourselves a tunnel going upwards!"

Everybody looked at Doc.

"What?" he apologized. "Even I can't think of everything."

OoOoO

A short while later a much bedraggled party of martial artists emerged from a hastily blasted tunnel onto the surface. Covered in rock dust, Doc stood up in the sunlight and inhaled deeply, brushing off his hands and clothes as he did so. He turned a manic grin back on the rest of the group as they all emerged in a similar state from the tunnel behind him. "Well, whatever our original purpose, this stop *did* provide us with a first-class training journey!"

"You can say that again," Nodoka breathed aloud in both relief and wonder. The woman who *never* allowed herself to look disheveled, not even a hair out of place, was at that moment in a frightful state, covered in rock dust, with loose hair and torn robes. It stood as a silent testimony to just how hard that whole experience had been for her.

Willow gave one of those feline-aloof looks that made Doc want to reach for a Batarang, and reminded Xander of a cat that had just fallen down off a sofa, or done something else amazingly clumsy, yet was pretending that nothing like that had ever happened.

Both girls were plainly interested in long baths and a great deal of personal grooming in their near futures.

Xander had to grin. "Yeah. It's too bad we couldn't bring everyone on it."

OoOoO

They did indeed have to form a human pyramid, Doc on the bottom and the two girls standing on his shoulders, on the back of the Cyclone to get all four of their people to ride on it at once.

And that did make the acceleration to eighty eight miles per hour interesting.

OoOoO

Doc, being the sort of fellow who thought ahead, had carefully noted the time their time vehicle had been stolen by the Invid at the same moment he'd been noting the route and trajectory of the thieves.

He had also carefully recorded just how long it took them to walk from the beach, all of the way to the Stilt Hive they'd first encountered before falling into the Genesis Pit, omitting the amount of time they'd stopped and trained during the middle of that trip.

So, because he was careful to record those things, it was a fairly simple matter to go an amount of time into the past that allowed them to be concealed in ambush at the entrance to the Stilt Hive a comfortable amount of time before the Invid carrying their car reached that point.

Xander and Nodoka leaped out, touching both the scouts carrying their car, activating their Breaking Points and causing them to explode, while Doc jumped out in the middle of them and did the same to their car, reducing it to so much metal shrapnel.

"What did you do that for?" Xander screamed.

"We're seven hundred feet in the air!" Doc pointed down from where they stood on the side of the highly elevated Stilt Hive. "The car couldn't get itself down intact. I couldn't carry it down in my arms, and neither could you! In fact, I'm positive that all of us together couldn't lift that much mass and weight, carry it all that distance down, and still dodge Invid fire all that way! Nor could any of us manage something that large and heavy in Hidden Weapon space. No, our only concern was that vehicle must never fall into the hands of the Invid! We can already travel back home, and as for that car, I can buy another base model to install all our specialty parts in! Come along! Now it's time for us to get out of here!"

After all the practice they'd been having it was no longer any particular challenge for the three to dodge Invid out away from the hive, lose them in the brush, then rejoin with Willow where she'd been keeping their motorcycle safe from harm.

OoOoO

The trip back to their Ranma universe went exactly as expected, which led to...

"What are we doing BACK here?" Xander shouted, as they watched over three dozen martial artists practice katas on the beach while Doc gleefully examined a dead flower, which hadn't survived the trip home and back.

"Simple!" Doc answered. "I can give you two very good reasons. I'd still like to get hold of that Shadow Fighter we had to leave behind in the underground hive on our first visit. And secondly, this really was a top notch training journey. All of our skills improved by leaps and bounds. So, I thought to kill two birds with one stone! We need extra fighters to be able to take out enough of the Invid in that research hive to be able to properly secure the fighter, and many of our friends could use the increase in their martial arts skill!"

Xander thought it over for a moment. "I guess that works."

"What if someone gets hurt?" Willow questioned.

Doc gave a slight frown. "Well, I *was* going to use that Instant Jusenkyo powder to make twins of everybody, and send only the copies through the experience. I figured if the twin died, then when the curse was over at worst you'd be half-dead, and half dead is certainly better than all-dead. But no such luck. Jusenkyo curses don't appear to work outside of the Ranma universe. So I guess we'll have to chance it."

OoOoO

"Now what are we doing *here*?" Willow questioned as their second model of amphibious time car came out of the temporal warp.

"Like I said before," Doc exulted. "The Earth on a Robotech timeline goes through three separate and distinct invasions. We'd initially arrived during the Invid occupation period, where very little human civilization survived on the planet. As I told you, that occupation ends when a returning human space fleet drives the invaders off, at great cost to all sides involved. But with the exception of a few late-war developments like the Shadow Cloaking Device, that fleet was *BUILT* and launched before the second invasion! So all of the technology we might have learned by examining devices we found there, was just better done by stealing records of that technology *here*, during the second invasion!"

A swarm of giant humanoid mecha, specifically twenty two foot tall bioroids in service of the Robotech Masters, were doing battle against native Earth hovertanks on the horizon.

"Yeah, but..." Xander sputtered to silence as these particular invaders showed off their near-perfect hover technology as flying platforms zipped about overhead.

"Yes," the doc noted when his younger counterpart's attention had wandered. "The Bioroid Hover Craft, basically giant technological surfboards with two guns and a handle. They are impressive, aren't they? That's one major reason why I chose to return here, when those aliens were doing battle with the Earth's army, in hopes of picking up some portion of the alien's technology. Their hover boards in particular, as their maneuverability is unparalleled. One can hover stationary, attain speeds of nearly two hundred miles per hour, maneuver through narrow streets and corridors with the greatest of ease, fly as low as three feet above a surface, go from ground to orbit or even attain limited space flight, stop on a dime, accelerate to maximum speed within a few seconds, or fly straight up or down. If we could build a car with that kind of technology we'd never have to be worried about a rough entry after a time jump again. So you can see the source of my curiosity."

The aliens, in retreating from battle, were gathering all of their mecha into larger ships. Doc crossed his arms and assured, "Those Robotech Assault Carriers would be an even better score. A bioroid is about twenty two feet tall, and their hover boards are thirty one feet long, yet each Assault Carrier holds seventy-two of those monsters simultaneously, and delivers them to and retrieves them from battle. The Assault Carriers themselves are very nearly as nimble as the hover boards, while at the same time being much faster, routinely reaching speeds of three thousand, three hundred and fifty miles per hour. They've also got some very heavy guns of their own, and a hull so sturdy heavy laser artillery could barely scratch it. Supposing we could duplicate one of those, it would make our luxury liner look sick, and aside from the Breaking Point, there is very little even a cargo of heavy duty martial artists could do that might damage it."

"Yeah. I could see your interest." Xander was nodding. Shuttling carload after carload of drugged and sleeping martial artists home after their raid on that Invid hive had been fairly tedious, and had reawoken a desire to have a vehicle large enough to haul them all.

"But dear," Nodoka began, "Just how are we going to gain access to all these things?"

The group blinked. She did have a point. No one is foolish enough to make their cutting edge military technologies public record. So they couldn't just look it up in a library, or whatever.

Doc brought a hand down on Willow's shoulder. "Well, it just so happens that we have a nearly unstoppable cat burglar among us. And everything we'd want to study, Earth has already shot down some examples of, and their best scientists have been studying. Here is a list of all of the key technologies we are after. Let us know what you find, won't you, Willow? The rest of us are going to extend our beach trip."

OoOoO

More flashes of lightning, as their car once again emerged from a time displacement. Willow was in the back seat pouting, while the rest of them were tanned and covered with sand, a beach umbrella or two poking out among their luggage.

The Earth they emerged onto was almost a complete desert as far as the eye could see.

"What are we doing here?" Willow asked the expected question.

"End of first invasion, before the start of the second, when the crew of the crashed Earth battlefortress had started trying to rebuild society planetside. The battlefortress was badly damaged, but not yet totally destroyed. When we are right now is before the aliens they'd tried to include in human culture launched a final attack, ruining what was left of the operational sections of the crashed battlefortress."

"That is when, not what, nor why, Dear," Nodoka gently scolded her husband.

He grinned an apology. "Very simply, each era has their own distinct technology. At the end of this one, they have figured out all they are going to about their first generation Robotech systems, but have not yet started on new ones. So, if we should break into their records and steal what they know about what they've got now, it will make our next stop that much easier."

Willow looked up towards the giant, crashed battlefortress still being used as a civilization hub, a new city radiating out from the lake it had crashed in. "Right. Shouldn't take me more than half an hour."

"We'll have a picnic lunch ready for you when you get back," Nodoka promised.

OoOoO

"So, Dear, we've read all the records these people had as far as technology, why are we still here?" Nodoka asked as their car emerged from yet another time jump.

Doc gave her an only slightly demented smile and answered, "Why, I thought you should be pleased that we're going to save several generations of humans from each perishing in their own distinct orbital bombardments."

Everyone in the group blinked in shock at that.

"You're going to prevent that?" Willow suddenly *reeked* of approval.

"Of course!" Doc replied back.

"How?" They all echoed.

"That," Doc pointed to the giant, space battlefortress sitting new in its launching cradle, "is the answer. The first alien space fleet bombards the Earth looking to force that ship to surrender. The second race of aliens attacks the planet seeking treasure from its ruins, and the third attack comes because of what was sealed in there getting released to draw them here."

"So..." Xander tried to carry that thought forward, but couldn't.

"We're going to steal it." Doc grinned madly.

There came a long moment of silence.

"Can you do that?" Nodoka blinked up at the giant space battlefortress nearly three quarters of a mile in length.

"Why would you want it?" Willow felt bewildered. Some nice jewels, sure. A city? Or rather, a ship big enough to hold one? Where would you put it?

Catwoman was really more interested in some nice diamonds than giant starships.

But Xander now felt bemused wonder. "Oh, I dunno. You've got to respect a ship whose main gun could blow a hole clear through the Death Star. A hole a couple miles wide, so that you could sail the biggest Star Destroyer right down it without touching the sides. Hit that thing's main reactor and, just like in Return of the Jedi, the whole Death Star should blow up. And, if you want to take it a step further, the books say the SDF-1's main shield could take a hit from their own main gun before going down. So I'd say there's a good chance the Death Star's main laser might not do any better. So, no, you've really got to respect a ship that could go toe to toe with the Death Star and win. Each could hit the other with the worst they've got, the SDF-1 would destroy the space station, and not be destroyed in turn."

All the others had joined him in wonder.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

This story was an experiment. It was an attempt to get back to the happy, light style I was first known for. I admit, the stuff I write as Lionheart is often choked with explanations. Part of that was an attempt to obscure my writing style so folks who'd read both could not identify me as easily. But an increasingly large part of that was a legitimate response to readers who wanted this or that question explained. Then often those explanations were challenged and required more explanation as a response.

Anyway, this story was an attempt to drop all that and go back to happy, fun and funny stuff like I wrote before. And, judging by the response, I will be the first to admit the experiment has failed. Half the reviews are complaints or demands, while the other half barely muster a tenth the positive responses I could have expected from posting equal chapters of any other thing. Which is a shame, as this is the only one I'd ever attempted where the whole story was plotted out from the very first chapter clear through to the end.

I am happy when I can tell you guys are, but that really hasn't been the case for this story. So it simply no longer holds my interest. I can't write something that bores me, so barring a miracle, expect this to be the last chapter of this story.

I'd kept thinking "Oh, next chapter it will catch on. Next chapter word will have spread and it will have enough of a following." I kept thinking that from the first chapter on. But, if anything, it has gone the opposite direction. I had my largest response to the first chapter, and it has consistently gone down since then, with even some of my former best reviewers turning wholly negative, or, like Katdemon18, who on this story at least has reliably provided more text review alone than all others put together, just apparently lost interest.

So, no. I no longer hold out any hope for it to finally catch on, and will close up my notes and consider it abandoned. 


	10. Chapter 10

Eighty Eight Miles Per Hour  
Chapter Ten

by Jared Ornstead  
aka Lionheart  
aka Skysaber

OoOoO

As far as I can tell, the entire Robotech series is up on youtube, put up by Manga Entertainment, which makes me guess they are the current holders of the copyright.

You can probably learn all you want to for context of this story by watching the first twenty minute episode, even the first three minutes will show you all you need to know about the ship I describe here. Just do a search for "Robotech Boobytrap" it should be top of the list.

I'd post a link but is nuts about stripping those out.

OoOoO

There came a beep as the bulkhead door swished open, announcing the entrance of a guest. Doc looked up from his work to see Willow standing there dressed in the uniform of one of the SDF-1's bridge officers.

She smirked as she gave him a sharp salute.

"Everything alright there, Doc?"

The older man who had once been Xander smiled. "Just fine, Willow. How go preparations for your wedding?"

"To tell you the truth, I think Xander, my Xander that is, is still a bit amazed we are getting married," the young bridge officer told the man as she gracefully took a seat at his dining room table, opposite the half he had carpeted with papers. She appropriated his carafe of hot cocoa and filched a clean cup, pouring herself a dose of the delicious beverage. After blowing over the cocoa and taking her first sip, she told him, "But really, though my body doesn't look it thanks to those mushrooms, I just hit thirty. And, well, at a certain point in a girl's life she wants a little stability."

Doc nodded along, saying nothing, but doing the math in his own head; she'd been sixteen at the start of their little journey through dimensions. Then add on to that the one year training disaster under Genma Saotome where the girl had fled from the man's verbal abuse and gone off to play Catwoman. Five years more training under Genma's girl-side clone learning the Anything Goes fighting style. Another five years under the Amazons getting her flaws and weaknesses introduced under that tutelage trained back out of her again, then now five more years graduating the Robotech Academy as a bridge officer.

All that added up in his mind to a round thirty-two. But he supposed, even going back to the Ranma universe to partake of mushrooms that reduced their physical age, Willow was a girl and those were not above lying about how old they were.

Especially when it came down to things like dating and marriage.

"Say, I've been meaning to ask," Willow bubbled, now having finished half her cocoa. "The layout of this ship is nothing like the version of it I snuck through in the future. Do you know why that is?"

"Certainly," Doc smiled, laying aside the latest plans he'd been working on. Leaning forward, he placed his elbows on the table and laced his fingertips together. "First a brief history of the ship is in order. Originally, in *this* timeline, in a far distant galaxy three alien races went to war. Race One, the Zentraedi, were the first to show up here on Earth, but they are simply cloned giants developed as super-soldiers by Race Two, the Robotech Masters, to help them fight Race Three, who were the Invid.

"Now all those races first went to war after a brilliant young scientist by the name of Zor discovered the amazing properties of an energy source used by the Invid, and the rest of his race killed most of the Invid race to get it. This is important to you and me only because Zor basically developed all of the technological breakthroughs that created the Zentraedi in the first place, and gave both them and the Robotech masters all of the nifty toys they use, like antigravity, tremendously powerful lasers, and transforming mecha. And this ship we are on right now, what we call the SDF-1, was originally Zor's personal battlefortress."

Seeing Willow choke on her cocoa, Doc grinned. "Yup. The man who, at least as far as we know, developed all of the technology we've been trying to steal out of the first two alien armadas to invade Earth built the SDF-1 as his own private ship, and at the time he built it, it was the most sophisticated vessel in any of the three alien armadas, because he included technological tricks and breakthroughs he didn't share with anyone else."

Doc exhaled, and leaned backwards in his chair. "Then, of course, he died and for reasons of his own he sent this ship fleeing across the universe. The Robotech Masters sent some Zentraedi to chase it, and it wound up in a series of battles that, quite frankly, it lost. Despite its technical superiority, Zor's battlefortress was outnumbered literally billions to one, and even the small fragment fleet the Zentraedi sent after it while the main force stayed behind to deal with the Invid had it millions to one. At those odds, not even Happosai could have won against untrained schoolchildren. Despite his greater abilities, he would have done a great deal of what this ship did: hiding and running. Still and all, Zor's battlefortress was able to escape each encounter, until it arrived here where, battle damaged and its crew already having died, it crashed, and the people of Earth recovered it. Now you have the necessary backstory. Are we clear so far?"

Willow nodded, happily nibbling on a doughnut she'd snatched out of his supply.

"Good." Doc concluded. "Because as good a job as Earth did in rebuilding this vessel, our scientists did not really understand what they were doing. They were studying something brand new and didn't even have perfectly working systems to start with. The battlefortress was already shot up pretty badly when it got here. Add to that the fact that it entered Earth's atmosphere so violently the shockwave of its passage alone was enough to completely annihilate entire cities along the path of its descent, then it hit Macross island with greater force than a nuke, vaporizing half of the island on impact."

Doc waved a hand airily. "Now I want you to picture, if you will, heating a car up until the metal glows cherry red, then dropping it a great distance. The crash broke even more things than the previous battles had. While the hull absorbed the brunt of the damage, anything inside that could be burned or shattered probably was. Frankly it is a miracle of engineering that so many of the sophisticated techno-systems survived, or could be repaired."

Doc poured his own cup of cocoa, claiming the last glass full before Willow could drain it all. "So now Earth enters the picture, and at least at first everything we know of this new super-technology was learned by taking apart, trying to repair and study this ship. Some parts we did pretty well on. Our individual combat mecha are far superior to anything the Zentraedi had... well, with one or two little exceptions. But on the whole, what didn't survive the crash we never did learn how to replicate properly. So the ship is a hodgepodge, a hybrid of Earth and alien technology."

"So what did survive?" Willow, now done consuming his doughnuts, filched an apple out from his fruit bowl.

"It would be easier to tell you what got completely lost," Doc told her honestly. "Whatever was mounted on or outside of the main armor belt of the hull got burned away or crushed during the initial crash. That cost us just about all the ship's weapon systems outside of the colossal main gun, and virtually all of the original sensors. And the human replacements we devised did not measure up to the originals. The SDF-1's secondary weapon systems and sensors were at a serious disadvantage to the enemy's the entire war. The main armor belt had also sustained so much damage that it had to be entirely replaced, and our replacement was not nearly as good as the original. Then the highly advanced medical equipment of the original ship did not survive the crash. Those are the things we know about, that we lost."

Doc grinned at his dinner guest, and it had the old slightly demented edge to it. "Or, at least, those were the systems that got destroyed during the unaltered timeline."

Willow blinked and perked up with interest at his suggested temporal adjustment.

The scientist grinned right back at her. "Oh yes. I interfered. I have no problem with Earth's technology. It's just the alien's stuff is so often better, at least in the narrow scope they use it in, that I really didn't want to pass up a chance to learn all of it I could. Unfortunately for us, the 'narrow scope', our enemies devote themselves to is combat, and it is never a good idea to be less technologically advanced than your opponents in war."

Doc put down his cup with perhaps more force than he'd intended, startling Willow, as he learned back in his chair, lacing his hands behind his head as he spoke to the ceiling. "The very best parts of the SDF-1 had always been those left over of the original battlefortress. Mostly the main gun and hyperspace-fold transportation system. Every part of this ship we had to replace with our own designs sucked by comparison to the original, or our enemy's. So I thought, why not save as much of the undamaged tech as possible?"

Willow, who had the mind of an ingenious thief, thought for a moment, then declared. "You got to the ship before it crashed!"

Instead of Doc answering staying still, he got up to make more cocoa, "Essentially, yes. I went to the future to record the point of entry into local space of the alien battlefortress, then traced the trajectory and speed it would have taken as it crashed."

Doc leaned to the side against a counter as he took a piece of fruit out of the fast diminishing bowl. "At first all I was going to do was set up space cameras around the course to take pictures of the ship before it entered the atmosphere, then again as it made its descent," He shrugged. "Just a few close-up photographs of what the outer hull looked like before it got baked, bent and smashed up in the crash would have been an enormous help in trying to figure out some of those systems we lost there. After all, a puzzle is always hardest when you don't have a picture of what the final product is supposed to be. Even watching parts as they melted or slagged off during the descent would have told us something about the metallurgy that made them up, so would have been of use."

"But that's not what happened, was it?" Willow perceived. "Why?"

Doc gave a little self-deprecating shrug. "As usual, the space agencies were giving us all sorts of trouble scheduling a mission they couldn't see the point of, and we were not about to give them our real reasons because that would involve revealing our ability to time travel, which would at minimum get us nationalized as a strategic asset, if not get the whole planet destroyed as dozens of separate organizations ran their own secret missions to alter major events of the timeline in their favor, generating cascading paradoxes that might quite literally destroy this entire universe."

Willow smacked her own lips and said, knowing how her oldest friend thought, "So you ran back in time just long enough to make your own space agency."

"Of course!" Doc agreed with a manic grin. "Just a little one. But then as we were arranging to set up those space cameras I got an idea out of looking over the repair logs you brought back out of the future that showed how the original reconstruction of the ship went."

Doc bit into an apple. "Basically, I did it to know where in particular to focus our cameras. But looking over those reconstruction logs reminded me once again that the only systems Earth was able to fully restore were those that already worked despite all of the damage the battlefortress had sustained. An antigravity system was one of them, although originally there were some errors made during reconstruction, so that failed the first time it was used. Nevertheless, I knew from those future logs what it was, how it worked, and more importantly, *that* it worked when the ship first arrived on Earth."

Willow finished munching on her apple that she had stolen out of Doc's hand, then declared, "So you and probably your wife, knowing where the battlefortress was to arrive, were there waiting for it and boarded the ship when it first emerged out of space-fold, and before it crashed on Earth. Then you used your knowledge to activate the antigravity system!"

Doc gave her a decisive nod, acknowledging her summation as correct. Then he said, "We couldn't stop the ship from crashing entirely, it was far too damaged, and already going far too fast for that. But we were able to bring it down much more gently this time. No massive shockwaves destroying whole cities, for one. No annihilating half of Macross island when we set down, for another. We soft landed, setting down about as gently as a shuttle flight."

"So, the reason the internal layout is not the same..." Willow gasped as she realized

"Correct!" Doc beamed. "It's because the copy of this ship you went through in the future was one that followed the original storyline. It emerged, already damaged, then crashed badly, getting even more banged up. But the SDF-1 we are in right now has been spared much of the trauma it originally would have gone through, so it is far more intact."

Willow put down her apple core, then cast her eyes around for more fruit. Finding none, she went to open the fridge. While peering inside, she asked, "So what are the differences?"

"More of the original weapons systems and sensors survived, for one." Doc agreed with the redhead's search for food and brought out a half-eaten cake. "Most of the armor belt survived intact, for another, allowing us to analyze and mostly duplicate that, so the current incarnation of the SDF-1 can survive far greater punishment than the one Earth would have put into service if the timeline had remained unaltered."

Doc divided up the chocolate cake between him and his oldest friend, knowing that she would steal half of what he took for himself. It was part of the program. Being martial artists of their level used up enormous amounts of energy, so they had commensurate appetites, and she was eating like she'd exercised lately, while he'd been stuck inside all day working on plans and reports. "The end result is, with the ship that much less broken, and us already knowing all the super-technology Earth had gleaned out of the crashed starship in the first timeline, Nodoka and I became the experts leading the reconstruction project and were able to restore and learn several times as much of Zor's original systems and technology."

"Yeah. I've been meaning to ask," Willow gestured around to the rather spacious cabin with her fork. "How did you get to be chief engineer of the SDF-1, anyway?"

"Simple. I own it." Doc shot her a smile, then added detail to the explanation, "Alright, by now going back in time and setting up a few patents to secure funding is getting kind of ordinary. It's routine, really. You need more money, you start more companies. We did that to start our own space agency, and we did it to buy Macross island, too."

Willow blinked up at him over her now half-empty plate."But why buy the island?"

"Salvage rights!" Doc beamed, munching lightly on the small piece of cake she'd left him. "What lands on my land is mine. By purchasing the island on which the alien space vessel would crash, before it crashed, then, provided we had salvage rights, when it crashed that alien space ship legally belongs to us. And we were *very* careful to own salvage rights, along with a number of other legal advantages," Doc clarified.

"Yeah. But it doesn't mean anything. No government on Earth would respect those rights," the catburglar cautioned. "Not when it comes to something like this. Most governments talk a good game, but very few of them would let their own laws prevent them from getting what they want, when they really want something. And this would qualify!"

"They are not required to respect it, at least not yet." Doc admitted. "No, all those rights were supposed to do was get me involved. I own the space agency that first discovered, then intercepted and boarded, the alien ship. I own the island it landed on, and was on the vessel before it has even set down on Earth, long before Earth's governments settled their differences and got a first contact team to the site. That got me access, and with what I know, not only of the technology, but of the ship itself from the records we memorized out of the future, I could work wonders in 'discovering' aspects of how the alien derelict worked! All together, that made me irreplaceable in the reconstruction project that turned the crashed alien wreck into the Earth's first space battlefortress!"

"And," Willow smirked slyly, "Being the legitimate, if unrecognized, owner, you won't feel bad when you steal it."

"Precisely!" Doc shouted, thrusting a finger into the air.

Then he settled down almost instantaneously into a relaxed pose in a chair. "But we pretty much had to go that way. There was no way we'd ever have rebuilt this ship on our own. In the show the announcer says flat-out that it took the entire resources of the planet over a ten year period to transform the crashed alien wreck into a functioning starship, and having lived through and largely directed that process now, I can tell you out of personal experience, he was not far wrong! It boggles the imagination how much work went into this, and I've had the pleasure of starting with a much more functional ship! I can't even imagine how much more of a headache it would have been if we hadn't meddled in the timestream to get a much better starting point. The reconstruction project took everything the Earth could handle as it was!"

The Doc relaxed into a much more casual posture. "Still, I guess a big part of that was my fault, as I knew going into this project that whatever didn't get done right the first time will probably never be done. We certainly are unlikely to have another opportunity like this one to direct so much resources to have things built to our specifications."

"Such as?" Willow lofted an eyebrow, thinking about the mischief he could've gotten up to.

Doc saw her mind just as friends of many years often do. "Crew comfort, for one. In most every way imaginable, this ship now exceeds our former luxury liner. It even has surfing!"

At Willow's plainly disbelieving look and lofted eyebrows raised in challenge, the scientist expounded, "Zor, who built this ship, was a member of the race that came to be known as Robotech Masters, and that race more or less gave up living on planets, as those were too hard to protect from the massive hordes of Invid. So it is something of an irony that by the original design specs, the city in the SDF-1's belly was meant to be there. In the show one was built as an afterthought, constructed by refugees picked up out of a horrible accident. But all battlefortresses and motherships built by the robotech masters for their own use had one, and without the horrible catastrophe of slamming into a planet at full speed, enough of the original city remained we not only learned it had been there, we were able to restore it! We sold the concept of reconstructing it to the Earth council under the excuse of giving the SDF-1 a secondary purpose as a colony vessel, and under that kind of budget it wasn't too hard to sneak in a few 'standing wave' generators luxury liners use to allow surfing!"

Willow blinked, not only mollified by his answer but surprised by how easy he made it sound.

Doc spun around so he sat in an entirely different, yet still relaxed, posture. "For another example of a good change, the SDF-1's original compliment of veritech fighters on the day they launched it in the unaltered timeline was one hundred and twenty, or ten squadrons. During the year or so they had in space, they got that up to a little over double the starting amount, despite replacing constant losses. But those limits were first an artifact of human thinking, then scarce resources. The space available on something like this is enormous! Comparable Zentraedi vessels host more than a hundred times that many fighting mecha, and their single pilot vehicles are many times as large as ours. They have to be. We only built our veritechs as big as they are to stand roughly the size of the enemy *pilots!* As their craft are built to contain those pilots, it is simple logic that for there to be anything to them *but* pilots, they've got have more size. And Zor's original battlefortress design included space for a good twenty thousand of them, or more. No, the space was there to do much better, but all we managed to get Earth's government to allow was for us to prepare capacity on this thing to carry and manage five hundred squadrons of veritech fighters. That's six thousand planes. Not really a patch on the original craft complement, or the thirty thousand or so that a Zentraedi ship of the same size would be carrying, but then we do still have other surprises on this vessel."

Doc winked at her. "A matter of interesting trivia, but regardless of our capacity, we've still only got those original ten veritech squadrons assigned to us. The Earth Council decided in their wisdom we couldn't possibly need more under our current conditions."

Willow could understand his amusement. Under strength meant fewer people on board, which made it that much easier to steal when the time came. "So, you just want the ship to do its job, but better," she summarized.

"Exactly!" Doc cried out, excited by her insight. "And there were so many opportunities to do just that! When the derelict that was to become the SDF-1 first crashed on the Earth, humans knew nothing of the sophisticated alien technology it contained. In the act of rebuilding it they learned a great deal, but that was still incomplete; and what they couldn't figure out, they just patched together with human systems, only those didn't always work out right. They certainly didn't perform at the level of the super-science they were replacing!"

Doc's shoulders appeared to catch fire as his eyes gleamed with excitement as he posed with clenched fists over the table. "But THIS time! I knew EVERYTHING the Earth had figured out concerning this great vessel before it even arrived!"

"So, you're thinking," Willow purred approvingly, "That if Earth, say, learned forty percent of the science they *could* have learned working on this ship, that you, having come back in time already knowing that forty percent, could make that the starting point, not the end, of what we gained out of study of that crashed derelict. So you might have, say, pumped up the total knowledge we gained of its super-science to, say, eighty percent?"

"Wouldn't that be nice?" Doc grinned, imaginary flames disappearing from off his shoulders. "Sadly, we'll probably never know the true numbers. Most of the advances made are just doing the same tricks it already taught us the first time a little better: More efficient power generation, better transmission of it, stronger lasers, better alloys, and so on. But there were one or two real gems in that gold mine we never expected."

"Like what?" His old friend appropriately rose to the bait.

"Medicine primarily," he grinned. "Cloning, medical stasis, and techniques that assure virtual immortality are now all not only possible, they could be routine, although I have no plans to release that last one." Doc climbed down off the table, shaking his head, "Mostly for fear of corrupt leaders ensuring they'd never die, as happened among the Robotech Masters. To be honest, I never anticipated half of the civilian devices we found in the wreckage of that Robotech Masters city. It is going to revolutionize our standard of living when they finally get around to releasing more of it to the general public. And I have to admit, it was wonderful figuring out things Earth never got right the first time: Better antigravity, sensors, materials technology and that sort of thing, than Earth had achieved without our interference. There is so much more here than how to make a human body never grow old."

"But didn't we already have that?" Willow pointed out. "Just a quick trip back to that Ranma universe and take a mushroom."

"Wouldn't it be nice not to need that?" Doc asked. "Think about this: What if we get trapped somewhere, and couldn't return to that universe? Now we have a way to avoid growing old with medicine instead of magic. It can't be used to shrink yourself down to a child, but that doesn't make it totally useless."

Willow grew thoughtful.

Doc cast his eyes around the room, checking for a piece of uneaten food, since this latest energy surge had gotten him hungry again. Sadly, there were none, so he sighed and continued, "I also went back in time to found certain manufacturing companies that 'just happened' to be ideally situated to take advantage of the new opportunities rebuilding the giant battlefortress presented. These not only gave us opportunity to have 'brilliant insights' that allowed the technology assimilation to leap ahead, it also gave us better control of the ship's restoration. All of this meant better ability to rebuild the SDF-1 to something closer to its original capacity. Knowing everything that went wrong with the ship before we'd altered the timeline, we even found ways to correct those errors. Heck, the shields we installed this time work so well they are actually a little scary."

Doc chose not to mention that he and Nodoka had returned to that Invid-haunted future to spend several weeks in foxholes just inches away from the force fields surrounding the Invid hives, studying those shields using every instrument they could manhandle there and back. While Earth's scientists had eventually worked out on their own enough about force fields to construct one, even a moderately good one, as the primary defense mechanism of the SDF-1, what he and Nodoka had learned out of studying the Invid's force fields had magnified those until, as he'd said, what they could do with them was really a bit scary.

Going by the Lang scale, if the previous incarnation of the SDF-1's main barrier shield could absorb sixty thousand units of hostile incoming energy before failure, the new system they'd provided could handle more than three million. A result fifty times as powerful as Earth would have achieved. And they'd fit on four complete and separate sets of shield generators, with their own independent power systems, for in case one failed. They'd also overcome the problem in the TV series where the ship could not fire its main cannon while a full barrier shield was activated.

Sometimes it really benefited one to be able to go back to the future. The study of science where literally everything ever discovered could be at your fingertips, could really become rather heady. At this point he really began to suspect this ship *could* take a hit from the Death Star's planet-killing laser, should such a thing ever become necessary.

And Doc had gotten in a fair amount of study on that Invid Genesis Pit, too.

Doc summarized for Willow's sake, "What all of this means is that while the main gun is the same, because that one didn't need our help to work right, having survived mostly intact in both timelines, in all other ways, the SDF-1 is more powerful than it would've been without our intervention. It is still basically the same ship, and does the same things. It just does them better now that more of the original technology and systems have been preserved."

Here the good doctor snorted, surprising his friend. "Not like it matters. Even if this version of the ship is fifty times as powerful as what Earth would have produced without us, and in many ways it is, it's still only half as good as what Zor built in the first place, and that original version of the ship still got its behind kicked across several galaxies by the crushing hordes of its enemies. No matter how good the SDF-1 is, the Zentraedi fleet still outnumbers us, literally billions to one. The only hope the Earth has to survive the upcoming conflict is for there to be no conflict. And the only way that could happen is if the aliens have no reason to attack, which means this ship can't be here when they come looking for it."

"Which happens in..." he looked up at a colander, "ten days."

"So our plans are still on to steal the ship to prevent everyone fighting over it," Willow confirmed.

"Are you ready?" he asked seriously.

Willow laughed. "Why *else* do you think I spent years at the newly formed Robotech Academy learning how to pilot this thing? I certainly didn't attain command rank to help my looks. Have you seen what those senior officers look like? And I'll tell you up front, I didn't do it for the pay grade, either. Most couldn't afford to live without base housing."

The catburglar's eyes narrowed and gleamed, catlike. "No, I am fully qualified on every aspect of how to operate this thing. Hearing it from you just confirmed things and cleared up some mysteries. You'd better believe I am ready to steal this ship."

Doc's fresh pot of cocoa whistled, and he poured them both a cup. "Then let us toast to our success in this effort. For if we succeed, the population here will be spared annihilation."

The two clinked together their glasses

OoOoO

"Enter the Angels!"

Xander stood up in his contestant's chair. "Now, representing the Anything Goes style, the White Knight!"

Tossing the scaled-down version of a medieval knight in white armor onto the energized playing field activated the electronics in the little toy, and caused it to become animated, to the cheers of the crowd as it posed and landed with unusual grace.

This game was called Angelic Layer, where thought-controlled dolls called Angels fought to the amusement of crowds larger than pro sports usually brought in, and Doc was pretty certain the game didn't exist in the local universe before their alterations to the timestream.

Scientifically, the game could have come into being in this universe with the advent of the improved super-science mecha controls copied out of the less damaged alien starship. But Doc said that wouldn't explain how the technology, event sites and especially the major players of the game, all matched so precisely the anime series about the game.

Xander had to admit - he didn't much care. Dimensional physics and crossover theory made no difference to him. It was all so much techno-babble, stuff where a PHD in physics would only get you halfway to understanding the basics of it.

Which meant Willow loved it, of course.

No, he was here because this was a fighting game where, with enough experience, the foot-high doll you controlled could feel like it was yourself on the game floor. Most players didn't go that route, preferring to observe from their own sets of eyes, but Xander had a different motivation - namely that Doc had adopted that Ranma universe as his own, and they couldn't go back there until they had the ability to take on several A-rank foes and win.

This Robotech universe didn't have the high-level martial artists they needed to practice against in order to get their own level of skill up there to where they could take on Herb and his Musk Dynasty and win.

But they did have Angelic Layer, and on the layer, the dolls fought almost identically to the skill and power levels shown by some of the better Ranma universe martial artists.

Xander was well aware fights using an electronic doll as your proxy didn't do anything for the muscles of your own body. However, by sinking deeply into the thought-control apparatus so that your perspective switched, and the doll felt like your own body, the skills and experience gained by going up against top-ranked opponents was the same.

What was embarrassing was he'd never ranked in the top three contestants of this game. Unless he was on his better days, he didn't even rank in the top ten. But then, that's what he was playing this for, to learn and grow by the experience of going up against superior fighters - even if one of the players who beat him regularly was a girl still in kindergarten.

But then, unlike them, Xander's skills and power followed him back into real life. One of the better players in this year's tournament was a middle school girl who admitted to having no athletic ability or talent at all outside of the game.

But on the layer, her doll was beating up veterans with several times her experience.

Xander could hardly complain, as his assistant/advisor at the national games was a teenage idol singer who could hardly beat up a teddy bear in real life. The reason he'd invited her to assist him was so that on that pretext he could insist they do practice fights using their dolls against each other. She'd agreed. The reason that was so valuable to him was the girl had figured out how to fight using wind to transmit the power of her blows over long distances, and in those practice matches together he'd picked up those vital techniques from her, and after a bit of work translating the skills, could now do that in real life.

That sort of thing was the whole reason he fought this game in the first place!

Xander's real body slumped down in its seat, as though deeply asleep, while the boy felt his thoughts and perspective take over the doll on the playing field as if it were himself down there.

The layer flashed and became a glacier, holographic terrain having been added as a new feature to this year's national games, with enough force fields and whiz-bang tech involved so that, for the dolls, the terrain was absolutely real.

So much the better. For his mind, currently possessing the doll, feeling the icy chill of wind on his skin made for that much better a learning experience.

"Let's have an angelic fight!" The announcer cheered, starting the match.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

When you are trying to come out of a writing slump, you write whatever story wants to be written, following ideas as they come. There is no other good way of restarting the flow of ideas that I know of.

So, this formerly dead story seems to be getting a second chance, just because it had a bunny that was willing to nibble on me in an otherwise dry time.


End file.
